Calamity
by Anjelle
Summary: A C-Rank retrieval mission takes Boruto's squad a ruined village. When he splits off from his teammates, he finds himself unwittingly thrown back to a time when his father was shorter than him, the village was half the size, and a whole lot of dead people were still alive and kicking. Were that all, maybe he could cope. But the curse mark on his arm just won't stop talking to him.
1. Chapter 1

**Lately, I've been focusing on original stories and thought I was more or less done with fanfiction. But, well. You know what they say about old habits. This is my first time delving into the Naruto fandom and I'll be upfront about the fact that I'm _far_ from an expert on the world and the lore, so please be forgiving if some things don't quite line up with canon fact. (An example is that canonically Boruto and Naruto are the same height at 12 years old, but in the story Boruto is just a bit taller. Other changes include how curse marks and chakra sensing work, though you'll notice others with time. Some people have pointed it out so I thought it best to clarify here!) I've also not seen much of Boruto past the movie and the first bit of the series (this takes place BEFORE the Chunin Exams), so there will likely be a lot of discrepancies. Lastly, this story _will_ have some canon divergent happenings, so bear that in mind.**

 **A big thanks to my wife Blackberreh for the wonderful cover.**

* * *

Against the blue afternoon sky sat a world of slate white slabs crumbling to their roots. Boruto lingered behind his team, hands shoved unceremoniously into his pockets. His feet dragged as they walked further into the ruins that made up the Village Hidden in Time. It seemed a stupid name to him; _time_ had had its way with that place. Everything looked old and ancient and fragile. It probably was, too.

Ahead of him, his teammates walked dutifully behind their leader. Sarada seemed interested in it all, but Mitsuki… not so much. He at least pretended to be entertained, which was more than Boruto could say for himself.

Maybe he should have been happy that they were finally getting C-rank missions, but at the end of the day, wasn't a retrieval mission just glorified errand running? That was probably pessimistic of him to think. It didn't make it any less true.

"The scroll we're retrieving appears to be instructions on how to perform an imprint jutsu," Konohamaru explained.

They stood at the foot of the World Temple—at least, that's what he'd heard it called, whatever that meant. He absently kicked about a stone as he walked. Sarada just rolled her eyes.

"So, it leaves an imprint… of what, exactly?" she asked, ignoring her teammate completely.

They passed through the front entrance of the temple where some of the excavators were hanging around on break. The first room was massive. Stained glass windows filtered in coloured light where they hadn't been shattered and cracked by time. The core of the building was standing better than anything else outside. Polished stone walls still stood strong despite everything. But this room was for worship; there was nothing of interest to see. They took a path to the right, down a long and narrow corridor that led to a stairwell that they could use to make their descent.

"Of the caster," Konohamaru continued, leading the way. The further they went, the more maze-like the structure became. It was… kinda cool. Felt like they were on an actual mission, now that everything wasn't so black-and-white. But their leader knew exactly where they were going so it wasn't much of an adventure. "With it, you can record a message and seal it on an object. Once the seal breaks, your message will play to the one who broke it, just like that!"

Sarada hummed, hand on her hip as she looked left and right at the aged engravings on the walls. "That doesn't seem all that useful… there are better ways to leave messages for other ninjas. Sounds like it would be easy for the wrong person to get ahold of, too."

Konohamaru rubbed the back of his neck and rolled his shoulders. "Well, you're not wrong… but this jutsu is _very old_. Back then, it was probably the best they had. And if we analyze it back home, it might glean some knowledge into other scrolls that the people of the Hidden Time stored here."

"And that is why we're bringing it back."

"You got it."

Boruto yawned. Instructions for a messaging jutsu? That's what they came _all this way_ for? It seemed like a pretty big waste of time… which was probably why they put a team of genin up to the task. He wasn't surprised.

The Time Village was located in a remote part of the Land of Fire, so it was practically right in their backyard. No roads led there; to find their way, they had to rely on the coordinates left to them by the excavators. Even still, Boruto was sure he could find his way back to Konoha now that he'd made the trip once before. He had a knack for remembering directions.

As they turned down a branching hallway, Boruto's steps slowed. He didn't even realize that he was falling behind, a strange feeling pulling at him from beyond the wall to his right. He blinked, gawking openly at the stonework.

Something was telling him to walk into it. That something was _stupid_. Why would he do that? But it kept prodding, nudging him to do it. There were no words, just this… strange intent bleeding into his mind from somewhere beyond. Whatever it was, it must have really wanted him to break his face against the wall. He snorted. "Yeah, sure. I'm that stupid."

Mitsuki's steps faltered. He twisted around, tilting his head when he saw his teammate lagging behind. "Did you find something?"

Boruto's head snapped forward and he stammered a moment before letting out a chuckle. "Like what? This place is _empty_."

Mitsuki stared, his eyes lingering longer than perhaps they should before he faced forward and rejoined the rest of the group.

Boruto made to follow. He took a step but stopped just as soon as he started. A shudder ran through him, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and his head snapped back to face the wall. Maybe he should…

He ran a hand through his hair and groaned. "Aw, damn it. Alright, already!"

His hands came together to form the familiar signs of his shadow clone jutsu and a clone popped into existence through a puff of smoke. They shared a grin before the clone dashed off after his team. At least with that, he didn't have to worry about a lecture from his sensei for wandering off. He doubted the clone would fool them for long, though. It was best to make his excursion quick.

Boruto eyed the wall critically, his fingers brushing against the smooth surface of the stone. The slightest touch caused a warm spark of chakra to bite at his fingertips and his eyes went wide, a slow grin curling his lips.

"Now that's what I'm talkin' about."

With a level of caution uncharacteristic of him, Boruto slipped into the wall. First his hand, then his body, as the warm tingle of chakra devoured him. He came out on the other side in a stumble. It was another hall. There was a strong smell of mildew here. Moss broke through the cracks and crevices brought on by age and the air was damp. He pulled a face and turned around, able to see the hall that he came from through the translucent images created by whatever jutsu was in place there.

"Huh. Not very hard to figure out, is it…"

He shrugged it off and followed the hall, his shoes splashing through the thin film of water pooling on the floor. It was dark, but not so dark that he couldn't see. It was a phantom dark. He could make out the edges of the walls and ceiling in the distance, a soft glow bleeding in from the bend at the end. He could make out the silhouette of algae and the lines of the stonework.

The further he got, the more he noticed a draft coming in from up ahead.

At the end of the hall, he turned and paused. It opened up to a chasm of branching pathways. Light filtered in from above through a stain glass ceiling three levels higher than the one Boruto was on. He looked down. There were levels below, too, fading into blackness. He swallowed his nerves and tread cautiously forward along the wall-less path.

"Where even is this place?" he muttered to himself, looking this way and that at the many openings in the walls, leading to and from one another. "Which way is it?"

There was a buzz at the back of his mind and he whirled around. His sight came to rest on a doorway two levels down and he felt… something.

"There?" he questioned, waiting for an answer that never came.

He hopped off the path he was on and landed on another, entering his chosen doorway. As he stepped off the path, he stopped. Something told him not to step forward. He couched, lowering his hand to the stone tiles, rolling his eyes when it fazed right on through. "The same trick twice? Really?"

He hopped up and concentrated his chakra on the bottoms of his feet, allowing him to easily walk along the cavern's walls. He huffed, chin up and arms crossed. It continued like that for a while. The traps were simple, easy to see through, and a bit of a joke, compared to some of the stuff they'd had to do in the academy. Whatever they were hiding down there couldn't have been very important.

Eventually, he came to a door. There was a hidden switch, a riddle about time engraved on the wall. He couldn't read the text; it was foreign, ancient and, quite frankly, looked more like pictures than words to him. But there it was again—that feeling, that _pull_ , and he was led to find the switch beneath a statue in another room. The door opened with the gravelly slide of stone, the floor quaking beneath its might, and in the centre of the room beyond stood a pedestal.

Boruto took a deep breath and strode right on up. Atop the pedestal sat a scroll, secured there by a metal holder. Unlike the rest of the hidden chambers he had traversed, this room was dry and untouched. He doubted a scroll could have lasted otherwise.

 _Take it_.

He stepped back, looking around for the source of… _whatever_ that had been.

 _It's yours._

"...Mine?" He raised an eyebrow, observing the scroll, and let out a forced chuckle. "What would I want with some dumb scroll? What is it, anyway?"

There was no answer. He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting. Even what he heard hadn't really been words… They felt more like thoughts. He could glean meaning from them, but couldn't actually _hear_ what they were saying.

Boruto rubbed his forehead, licked his lips, and admitted to himself that he was perhaps a little unnerved.

Ah, whatever. Maybe he could take it to the excavators when he reconvened with the group, see what they had to say on the whole thing.

He snatched it off the pedestal and the moment he did his arm spiked with pain. Ink bled from the scroll onto his hand and up his arm. Markings of foreign characters coiled further and further around, to his shoulder, then his neck. He hurriedly dropped the scroll but it didn't stop the ink from spreading.

"W-what is this?" His voice cracked and he watched as the ink staining his skin lit up in a pale blue. The light brightened like a star until all he could see was white.

And through the white, two small, pinprick eyes watching him.

When the light faded the only thing left behind was a discarded scroll in an empty room.

* * *

Konohamaru smiled, arms crossed as he listened to the story one of the excavators was telling his team. None of the kids seemed all that interested, but he knew with time these sorts of things would garner more attention. The careful art of extracting artifacts from fallen ruins was one that could be appreciated more as one got older.

The woman smiled, holding up the imprint scroll with a gloved hand. "This here is your mission. Keep it safe for us on your return to Konoha, alright?"

Sarada stepped forward. She was already wearing gloves—they'd been instructed that they _needed_ them if they were to go to the excavation site. Everything down there was fragile and old, and the last thing they needed was for an artifact to be damaged by the oils of someone's skin. She took the scroll carefully in her hands, holding it like glass. She, out of all of her teammates, at least showed _some_ enthusiasm for the mission.

Boruto was dead last. He'd barely paid attention.

"So," Sarada began as she placed the scroll in the container they'd been given, "why are we just bringing back this one? You seem to have uncovered a lot…"

Looking around, Sarada was right; what had been found was placed on this floor, carefully separated from one another on tarps that had been brought down.

The woman dusted her hands. "Well, it's the only one safe to bring back right now."

"Safe?"

"Artifacts like this tend to have curses placed on them," Konohamaru supplied, figuring he could be proactive and turn their excursion into a lesson. "Countermeasures against theft and the like. Excavators can't safely handle any items they find until they've been looked over by an archivist."

The woman nodded. "Exactly right. Everything you see here has been extracted, but either hasn't been looked at yet or hasn't had any cursed seals removed."

Mitsuki blinked, his eyes moving across the room, scanning everything they had unearthed. Then his eyes were back on the scroll. "This one is safe, then."

"In fact," she began, lowering onto the floor, "it's the only item that's been checked so far that _doesn't_ have any protective seals on it. A bit strange, don't you think?"

Boruto rolled his eyes. "Probably 'cause it's nothing spec—"

The boy vanished in a puff of smoke, his last word hanging in the air.

Sarada stepped over to where her teammate had been, frowning. "A shadow clone?" She sighed. "Gosh, now where's that idiot gone off to…"

Konohamaru swallowed back his unease as he rubbed his neck. Something about this didn't feel right…

"Let's go find him, then… He couldn't have gone far."

* * *

Konohamaru was regretting the words 'he couldn't have gone far' when they were four hours into their search without a sign of the boy. He could already taste Lord Seventh's fury when informed of his son's unknown whereabouts. By that point, the excavators had halted their expedition to form a search party. This _was_ the son of the Hokage they were talking about.

By the fifth hour, one of the on-site archivists relayed to him that they found a suspicious hidden room. The traps had all been activated leading up to it, the door already open. Konohamaru arrived to find a lone scroll resting on the floor. Against the wishes of the excavators, he snatched it up and opened it, revealing nothing but empty, yellowing paper.

He swallowed the newly formed lump in his throat. "I need to inform Lord Seventh of this."

* * *

Boruto roused to a burning pain in his left arm. He hissed against the fiery heat until it cooled, and after a while, it was almost as if there'd been no pain to start. He blinked open his eyes, stared up at a stone ceiling, and then picked himself off the floor. He was in the temple—in that weird room with the scroll on the pedestal. He remembered grabbing it, and then…

The memory hit and the haze of sleep left him. He hurriedly pulled up his sleeve to see those strange markings—

They weren't there. There was nothing, not even a _hint_.

A dream? No. No, he knew what he saw. But, at the same time…

It was probably best to find his team now. He couldn't feel the clone anymore, but that was to be expected; he hadn't yet mastered keeping them around while he slept. How long was he out for? Sensei was going to kill him… or if he didn't, Sarada sure would.

He heaved a sigh and jumped to his feet.

The way back up was a lot quicker to traverse, now that he knew the way. Soon he was slipping through the fake wall and descending back down in the direction his team had gone. It didn't take long to notice that something was… off, though.

There was no one around. Even as he got closer to the excavation site, _no one_.

Even at the bottom, no one.

Boruto's next action was making it back to the surface. The sun was high and the ruins outside of the World Temple were just as vacant as the ones inside. He bit his lip, sitting on the steps as he mulled over what may have happened while he was asleep.

"They wouldn't have just left me here," he muttered to himself, tossing a rock in his hand absently. He threw it, watching it skid through the dirt. "Unless, maybe, they couldn't find me…"

But then where was everyone else?

The sun was still high and he rationalized that the best course of action would be to return to Konoha, just as his team probably would have. He could reconveen with them there and grill them on what happened. At the very least, he could be sure it would still be sun-up when he got back.

Not to brag, but Boruto found he was _very_ good at travelling alone. He made it back to the village in what he _thought_ was less time than it'd taken Konohamaru to lead them to the Hidden Time. Before long, he was signing in at the front gate. The guard stationed there looked bored before noticing him, giving Boruto's headband a narrowed look.

"Out causing trouble again?" the guard asked, looking back down at his table.

Boruto's nose scrunched up. "What's that supposed to mean, huh?"

"Where's your team?"

"Oh, uh…" He averted his eyes, rubbing the back of his head. There was a feeling in the pit of his stomach that he didn't like to think was shame, but it just may have been. It was his fault they'd gotten separated in the first place. He knew that. And he'd own up to it. He pointed out towards the forest. "Kinda got separated. I was hoping to meet back up with them in the village, y'know?"

The guard nodded along with a gruff snort and waved him inside.

The moment he saw the village, Boruto knew something was off.

It was very apparent that this was not the Konoha that Boruto knew. The whole thing felt smaller, more cramped. The buildings didn't reach as high. His eyes darted this way and that as he mapped out his village in his head, and nothing was where it was supposed to be.

The ramen place was there—the one that dad liked so much, Ichiraku Ramen. Same name, at least. The building as a whole was entirely different—small, humble. Old. The Ichiraku Ramen that _he_ knew was better kept. Looking around, a lot of places were like that. Small, modest shops and housing. Hell, he couldn't even see the rail—

As he looked up his breath caught in his throat. Hokage Rock was missing three of its seven faces. It was bizarre and almost disconcerting, not having his father's vacant-eyed face overlooking the village. The Sixth wasn't there, either, or the Fifth. They just ended after Grandpa Minato.

A thought buzzed around inside Boruto's head, one that he'd spent the better half of the day trying to ignore.

His house was gone. There was no Mom or Himawari waiting for him there. He checked the school next. There _was_ a school there, but it wasn't the one he knew. With an air of defeat, he dropped onto a swing, staring ruefully at the building. His hands gripped tightly to the rope, his eyes dipping to the ground.

 _Okay, just think for a moment._

The first assumption he could make was that he was trapped in a jutsu—that this was all an illusion, created by his mind to trap him. When he picked up the scroll, something came out of it. Maybe that could offer up an explanation for what was going on. Was it a curse? Damn, it better not have been a curse… He didn't know the _first thing_ about breaking curses. Someone in the real world would, though, right?

...Right?

The second theory stewing in his mind made him feel a bit silly for even thinking of it in the first place. Nah, it couldn't be.

The sun was setting, washing over him in an orange warmth. The warmth of the sun felt real. How could he tell that it wasn't? But its warmth was cut off abruptly as a shadow cast over him.

"Hey."

Boruto found a pair of sandaled feet set before him. He followed them up to an orange jumpsuit, the boy's arms crossed over his chest.

It was impossible. Even _he_ knew that.

"That's my—er… nevermind." The boy cleared his throat, leaning in as his narrow eyes met Boruto's. "Hey, I haven't seen you before… Are you new here, or somethin'?"

His eyes widened. His jaw slacked.

The boy blinked, scratching his head at the lacking response. "Uh… okay. Not much of a talker, are ya? Jeez…" He clapped his hands together, a grin splitting his face ear-to-ear, and he held out a hand. "The name's Naruto Uzumaki. I'm gonna be the Hokage!"

Oh.

Oh no.

Before him stood a boy, likely the same age, a little on the short side with bright blue eyes and unruly blond hair. It was a face he recognized from a framed picture in his father's office, a long-gone memory of the past.

To Boruto, his father had always been a towering, impossible figure of strength and something else, something a lot less savoury. Something a lot more bitter. So how could this small, goofy-looking kid ever be—

"Fine, jeez…" Naruto retracted his hand, throwing it behind his head. "You're kinda weird."

Boruto blinked. His mouth opened and closed as he tried to find his voice, his hands uncurling from the ropes to rest in his lap. "A-ah, er… sorry. Guess I spaced out there. What was that?"

Naruto raised an eyebrow. "You're supposed to give your name when someone gives theirs, y'know."

"Oh. Boruto." Crap. Thinking back, if this really was—and he felt stupid for even thinking it—the past, then the last thing he should have done was give his name. Right? It just came out so easily, and…

Then again, if this was the illusion of some sort of jutsu, it probably wouldn't matter. He wasn't sure if he should be banking on that, though.

"Boruto, eh?" Naruto kicked the dirt, looking him over with a critical eye. "You look kinda familiar."

"I look like _you_ ," he muttered in correction, regretting it as soon as he did.

"Yeah," Naruto grinned, "sure do."

Boruto's shoulders slumped and he averted his eyes to the ground again. He listened to the scuff of sandals, the shift of cloth as his father came to rest against the tree that the swing hung from. There was a short lived silence that he used to collect his thoughts. This kid was so _different_ , but there was a part of him that felt the same. And he was inclined to believe it all. That didn't mean it wasn't an illusion, or the product of some sort of jutsu, but at the very least, this kid was meant to be his father.

That also gave him a time frame for when this world was supposed to take place. He honestly didn't know much about his dad's childhood—like his time training as a genin, or how he got to where he was—but he _did_ know some of the basics. Dad had no parents. Grandpa Minato and Grandma Kushina died soon after he was born, so he grew up alone. Sometimes that seemed like it'd be a blessing to Boruto, but the more he thought about it, the more he couldn't imagine not having his mom or Himawari with him. And Dad, well…

He peeked up, stealing a glance at the short kid standing against the tree with crossed arms and legs, grinning at him. Did Dad always smile that much? As he fought through his memories, he found he had trouble bringing anything significant to mind.

"Where you from?" Naruto asked, but answered his own question when his eyes found Boruto's headband, and the smile slid off his face. "I've never seen you 'round here."

He chewed his lip and thought. He shouldn't just outright say it; he knew that much, at least. Things could change, or… something. As much as part of him wanted to challenge that he wouldn't care, he knew it was a lie. There were things he couldn't bear to erase.

When he couldn't think of an appropriate answer, he chose silence.

Naruto tapped his finger impatiently against his arm while awaiting a reply and when he didn't get it, he groaned. This version of Dad was very upfront about his feelings; he wore his every thought on his face. "Alright, then…" He nodded to the headband. "You're a ninja, right?"

"Genin," he supplied awkwardly, shoving his hands into his pockets.

Naruto had something to latch onto now and ran with it. "Me too. What team are you on? Who's your team leader? Got any cool jutsu to show off? Did you just come back from, like, a mission or something? Is that why I don't recognize you? Oh, but… that still doesn't make sense 'cause you weren't in my class."

Boruto raised an eyebrow. That was the most chatty he'd ever seen his dad, and it was kinda weird. As such, he followed the questions with an eloquent, "Um." His team wouldn't exist then, and his leader… Konohamaru would have been even younger than Dad. Couldn't use him. But there was one thing…

"Actually," he started, his legs swinging back and forth absently. "I'm on a mission now."

"Don't tell me: the old lady downtown lost her cat again?"

Boruto raised an eyebrow. "Er, no? It's a retrieval mission. Outside the village. C-rank?"

"What?!" Naruto ran a hand through his hair. "Aw, man… All we ever get assigned is stupid D-rank missions. How's that fair?"

Huh. It was hard to imagine the great _Hokage_ doing menial D-rank tasks around the village. The more he thought about it, though, the more he realized that his dad's shadow clones often did just that.

"Crap!"

He looked up. The sun dipped behind Konoha's walls and burned up the sky in a sea of fire-orange, bleeding out around the blue shadows stretching east across the village. It was later than he thought.

Naruto pushed off the tree and focused on the sunset with a slow-forming dread. "I'm supposed to meet Iruka-sensei!"

Boruto blinked, his shoulders slumping, and he stared hard at his father's shadow. It was long, warping across the ground, and reminded him of the Naruto that he knew. "You should get going, then."

The shadow remained.

"Hey," Naruto called, throwing his arms behind his head. "Ya hungry?"

* * *

Ichiraku Ramen was nothing like what Boruto had come to know. He remembered his father bringing him once or twice, and that place was nothing like the unassuming hole-in-the-wall where they sat now.

The sun was down, the darkness fought off by the lantern light glowing off the ramen bar. There was a steaming bowl of ramen sitting before him untouched. His father ordered it for him—today's special, apparently. His father, who was currently stuffing his face to the right of him.

There was a nudge to his shoulder and he shied away, eyeing the weird kid.

"Don't just stare at it, _eat_! Teuchi worked hard on that."

He snorted but found himself complying as he broke apart his chopsticks and started picking through the bowl.

Naruto heaved a contented sigh and twisted around, looking out into the night. "Can't believe we beat Iruka-sensei here. I wonder what's taking him, y'know?" He rummaged through his pocket before placing down a pile of change. Teuchi readily accepted the offer. "Actually… _do_ you know Iruka-sensei?"

Boruto swallowed his first mouthful and wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist. "Know _of_ him." Of course he knew Iruka. How couldn't he? But this Iruka wouldn't know _him_.

Naruto opened his mouth to reply when his attention shifted, his eyes shifting to the darkness, and his lips curled into a grin. "There you are!"

Iruka stopped at the edge of the bar's light, arms folded one over the other. "Sorry, Naruto, I got a bit caught up—" And then he noticed Boruto, eyes narrowed. Of course he wouldn't brush off the resemblance like Dad had. "Who's your friend?"

"I, uh—"

"Boruto!" An arm snaked around Boruto's shoulders, pulling him in. "Isn't it weird?"

Iruka frowned. "Like looking in a mirror." He took a seat, his movements careful and slow as he came to rest on the stool beside his former student. He rested his head in his palm, observing the two boys blankly. "Boruto. Where you from?"

Boruto swallowed. He felt like he was being scolded, Iruka's tone sharp and cold. Accusatory. "Konoha," he answered honestly. It was true, and it's what he told Dad. The look he was getting warned him that answering carelessly would lead to bad things, though, and he knew he had to double down on his answer. "I was born here, at least. I've been living in—" It was a stretch, but, "—Suna for a while now. I just… thought it was time to get back to my roots, y'know?"

Iruka gave him a side-long stare. "Coming all the way from the Hidden Sand, eh? Where are your parents?"

"I don't have parents." He stared into his bowl, unable to meet the eyes of the two seated to his right. That felt dirty to say, even if he deemed it a necessary evil. Staring so fixedly at his half-eaten ramen, he couldn't see the look his father wore. "They, uh… died. Long time ago."

"Then where are you staying?"

He shrugged and ducked his head in some vain attempt to escape confrontation. "I'll find a place."

A loud _thud_ interrupted the interrogation. Naruto rose, slamming his hands down on the bartop. Everyone went quiet as the boy stared fixedly at Boruto. For a moment, Boruto worried he'd offended his father—and felt equally shamed for lying about being orphaned.

Iruka was the first to break through the awkward stillness. "Naruto? Something wrong?"

"I, uh." Naruto's lips twitched and curled into a grin. "Hey, hey, you can stay at my place, y'know!"

Boruto blinked. "What?"

"I got plenty o' room! C'mon, beats sleeping outside, right? Right?"

Iruka shifted, placing a hand on Naruto's shoulder. "Naruto," he sighed, "I don't think—"

"Ack!" His noise of alarm startled them. Naruto combed a hand through his hair. "Everything's a mess back there. I uh—hey, stay right here! I'll be right back, y'know!"

Naruto never gave them a chance to respond. One moment he was there, making a scene out of himself, and the next he was running off into the shadows of night. Suddenly it was quiet. Boruto's bowl was still half full and no longer steaming. When he took his next bite, the noodles were cold.

Iruka twisted around and faced forward when his order was set before him. He passed a word of thanks, broke his chopsticks, and blew on the noodles. "Look," he started, swallowing back his first bite, "I don't know who you are, nor do I pretend to understand what it is that you're doing. What I do know is that Naruto isn't usually like this."

Boruto gulped, pushing away his bowl.

"He's not one to latch onto strangers so easily," Iruka continued softly, side-eyeing the genin by his side. "Naruto has always been alone. You've noticed it, too, right? The looks that he gets."

Boruto leaned forward on the bar, maintaining a thin veil of disinterest as his stomach knotted. As they walked through the streets from the school to the ramen bar, his father yammering on about his team—about how _annoying_ Sasuke was—he caught the stares. The whispers. Even before that, when he was making his way through Konoha alone, he was getting looks like that himself. At first, he wondered if it could be because of how confused he looked. Now he was starting to think that it was because… he looked like Naruto. Looked like his father.

"He may not realize it himself, but he's hesitant to attach himself to others. So I'm surprised he's taken such a shine to you."

"Why?"

Iruka blinked. "Well, because—"

"Why's everyone lookin' at him like that?" Boruto clasped his hands together, trying to overlap the image of the lonely child with the one of beloved Lord Seventh.

"I can't say," Iruka muttered, his fingers intertwined below his chin. "What I _can_ say is that Naruto is someone important to this village. I hope for your sake that, whoever you are, you haven't approached him with ill intent."

* * *

The bodies wandering the streets had thinned out considerably by the time Naruto came to retrieve him. Even still, he caught a few of those looks—curled lips, narrowed eyes, the kind of looks you'd expect to give to someone who personally wronged you. No one ever looked at the Hokage like that.

Naruto was yammering on about something unimportant, his arms cushioning his head as he walked a few steps ahead, leading Boruto to drag his feet with his hands in his pockets. He tried not to look around, tried to ignore the looks like his father seemed so practiced at doing, when his father spun around with one of those big, goofy smiles on his face.

"I mean, he'll never beat _me_ , but I'll bet Konohamaru will be a great ninja one day, y'know?" There was no answer, so he just made to continue. "It's too bad, though, 'cause _I'm_ the one who's gonna be Hokage."

Boruto's dragging feet halted then. It took a while for his chatty companion to take notice, widening the gap between them.

Naruto raised an eyebrow. "What is it?"

The street was empty. As they left the hub of the village and turned on to residential streets, the people started to filter out. They were alone now save for a stray dog rummaging through trash cans in the alley to the left, but what Iruka said to him was still ringing in his ears, nagging at his thoughts. "Why are you acting like it doesn't bother you?"

"What?"

"The way people look at you," Boruto bit out, hunching his shoulders. "How can you just—pretend you don't see it?"

Understanding dawned on Naruto's face and his smile slid askew. He turned back around and kept on walking, his pace slow until he heard the scuff of a second pair of footsteps following his and regained the confidence to pick up speed. "I hate it," he confessed. "But it's okay. When I'm the Hokage, they'll _have_ to respect me, y'know?"

Boruto stared at his father's back, swallowing the lump in his throat.

"So, I'm gonna prove myself. To the whole world if I have to!"

He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. _Stupid old man._

* * *

Hiruzen was in his office, smoking his pipe as he stared out at the pile of finished paperwork he'd set aside on his desk. The night was long and he was content in knowing that, come morning, he would be just a _little_ ahead, rather than behind. It was so very easy to fall behind, especially on days when Naruto decided to wreak his usual havoc, sending half of Hiruzen's staff into an unnecessary panic over his trivial mischief.

Before he could retire for the night, there was a knock at his door. Now Iruka Umino stood in his doorway, approached his desk, and he had a sinking suspicion that he wouldn't be returning home just yet.

"You had something to report," he prodded, his fingers intertwined atop his desk.

"Yes, Lord Third. It's…" Iruka sighed, scratching his head. "Maybe I'm overreacting. No, maybe I'm not. It just—something feels off, and I wanted to let you know."

"Out with it."

Iruka took a breath. "When I went to meet Naruto tonight, he was with someone. A boy, one that looked _just_ like him, claiming to be a Konoha genin. Boruto. That's what he went by."

Hiruzen's brow furrowed, trying to put a face to the name.

"He claims that he's just moved here from Suna," Iruka continued. "That he was born here, but grew up there."

He leaned back in his chair, removed the pipe from his mouth and tapped the side of it absently as he thought. "I'll double check our records, but I don't think we'll find a match."

"Neither do I."

The Hokage sighed and closed his eyes. He understood Iruka's fears; if this boy was lying, then who was to say he wasn't a spy from one of the other villages, trying to get close to their jinchuuriki, or worse? Hiruzen was a cautious man, but he wasn't fond of jumping to conclusions. Even if the boy was a liar, that didn't necessarily mean that he was an enemy.

Caution was always a good thing to have, though.

"I'll have Kakashi look into the matter," he assured. "If the boy's interest lies with Naruto then it's best to inform his team leader."

"Right. Thank you, Lord Third. I'm sorry for disturbing you so late at night."

Hiruzen waved him off. "Not at all. It comes with the job."

Iruka smiled with visible relief and bowed his head. "Goodnight, then."

The door slid shut and Hiruzen sighed. He would be here a while longer, it seemed.

* * *

Boruto's father lived in an apartment, some little hole-in-the-wall the Third must have shoved him in when he was old enough to be on his own. Naruto opened the door to the cramped bachelor he called home. The living space was made up of one single room. There was a bathroom off to the side, but everything else from bed to kitchen counter was shoved against one of the four walls. It was clean—he expected as much, with how his father ran off to organize his mess back at the ramen bar—but there was a distinct smell looming in the air that he couldn't place. It wasn't _bad_ , really, just… off. Not quite right, and a bit in-your-face.

Put like that, maybe it suited this version of Dad.

Naruto hurried him inside and shut the door behind them, moving to take a seat on the edge of the bed. "C'mon in!"

Boruto stood awkwardly in the doorway. The apartment was missing a lot of the personal effects that made a home. Sure there were a few posters on the walls, but there was nothing intimate about it. Back home, Boruto had his comics and his games. Action figures. Things that he liked.

What did Dad like?

Looking around… Ramen. He liked ramen. Some things never changed.

"Don't just stand there!"

Boruto rolled his eyes and took his shoes off at the door, even though he noticed his father clearly hadn't. He shuffled into the room with thinly veiled curiosity and lowered himself onto one of the chairs set at the kitchen table. There were a few dirty dishes in the sink, perhaps from a night or two of laziness, but all-up it wasn't that bad.

Twisting back around, there was Naruto's face again, in all its grinning glory. Waiting for him to say something.

"It's," he started, then paused as he wracked his brain for the right words, and stopped. Thought. Boruto didn't usually put this much care into his phrasing. "You live here all by yourself?"

The grin momentarily faltered, Naruto's legs crossed beneath him. "Yeah. Don't you live alone? Your parents are gone."

Aw, damn, he _did_ say something like that, didn't he? And now he was just digging his grave by building up the lie. "I lived in communal housing," he supplied, feeling the pinch of guilt as he did so. "So, it… yeah. It's different, I guess."

"Oh." Naruto nodded, eyes closed and arms folded. "But now?"

"Alone," he confirmed, and drew his leg up to his chest, resting his foot on the seat of the chair. "Same as you."

"Why come here, then?"

"Uh…"

"You don't got anywhere to stay, right? Least there you had that… communal thing."

Boruto mentally backpedaled and laughed, humourless and forced, running a hand through his hair. The more he built up the lie, the weaker it got, huh? Damn, he was bad at this. It was a wonder how his father was still taking what he said at face value. "I didn't really think this through, did I? I mean…" The last dregs of fading laughter left him. "I just… wanted to go home. I didn't think about the rest."

It took a moment for him to realize that wasn't a lie. Once he had, he couldn't stop.

"I didn't think it'd matter," he continued. "I thought I'd find them here. But… I didn't. There's _nothing here_ and no matter how hard I look it's not home. And now I'm here, in the middle off all… _this_. Probably screwing everything up."

He pried himself out of his ball of grief to see his father staring at him from the bed. He hurriedly covered his eyes with his sleeve, scrubbing away the film of water blurring his vision.

"Damn it," he bit out. "This is so uncool."

Boruto continued to hide behind his arms, soaking up the silence like a sponge as he composed himself. Here he was, cracking under the pressure of being left on his own for just half a day. _How lame_. He thought his dad would say something, maybe pry a little deeper. He heard shuffling, the clack of sandalled feet against the floorboards, first from ahead of him and then from his side. Movement near the fridge, the scrape of chair legs against wood. Then, some time later, the whistle of steam from a kettle.

Boruto lifted his head from his arms, observing as Naruto slid a cup of steaming tea before him. Boruto was never much of a tea drinker, but Mom was.

Dad didn't come home one night. That was nothing new; Dad rarely ever did. He was too busy being there for the rest of the village to be there for his son. Boruto stupidly thought that night would be different, though, so he waited at the kitchen table even long after Himawari was sent to bed with a slightly crumpled piece of paper set before him. The night held with it an eager energy as he doodled in his notebook, passing the hours until his dad would step through the front door, when he could present him with the letter personally.

Dad never came.

The overhead light in the kitchen broke through the blackness of the night as it creeped near and Boruto hung his head, his body crumbled over the letter. He hadn't moved when his mother entered, or when she set a fresh cup of tea and sat down next to him.

 _"I'm sorry, Boruto. I know how important this was to you."_

 _"It doesn't matter. Old man wouldn't care much, anyway."_

He wanted to be the one to tell Dad that he was assigned to Konohamaru's team, though.

Boruto stared at his reflection in the tea, smoothing his fingertip around the rim of the cup, and took a sip. The tea leaves were old; it hardly held any flavour. Something tugged at the corner of his mouth.

 _Stupid old man._

Naruto sat across from him, holding his head in his hand with that goofy grin Boruto was coming to find so familiar. "I dunno about all that crap you're talking about. But you can stay here awhile, y'know. I don't care."

And despite it all, he still couldn't swallow his pride long enough for a 'thank you'.

* * *

Boruto was tired. That wasn't surprising; it was the middle of the night and he'd travelled to and from the Hidden Time during the day. And boy, had he gotten a workout. It was hard to remember a time where he did that much running around. The latter half of the day may have been more physically subdued, but the mental strain wasn't pretty, either. But even despite that, he shouldn't be _this tired_. And yet he couldn't sleep.

Dad was over on the bed, snoring away. He left about two hours ago with a panicked, _"Crap! I forgot to ask Iruka-sensei for a spare futon! Uhh—wait here, I'll be right back!"_

And he waited. Poked around a bit, found that the fridge was empty save a carton of spoilt milk and the cupboards stocked with instant ramen. Before long, Naruto was back, they set up the futon, and the lights went out.

Boruto rolled onto his back and swept the back of his hand across his forehead. He felt hot and chilled all at once, unsure if he should pull up the blanket or kick it off. He looked to the window, the full moon bleeding down a pale light from where it hung in the sky, and then he looked down. An arm and leg were dangling off the side of the bed, leading him to snort. He closed his eyes again, took a deep breath. Held it. Then released.

 _I'm hungry._

His mouth twitched. A foreign thought invaded his mind, wordless yet clear with its intent, and he groaned. Eating could wait for morning; if he didn't sleep now he'd have no energy by dawn, and he'd already made up his mind to investigate what happened once Naruto was off with his team doing missions.

 _So hungry_.

With no will of his own, he picked himself up off the floor. Bare feet padded across the futon and came to a stop at Naruto's bedside, looming over him.

Wait, what?

No matter what he tried, Boruto couldn't get his body to listen to him, as though he were locked inside. His arm raised, shadowing his father's face.

Naruto stirred with a groan and a yawn, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He blinked blearily up at his guest. "Somethin' wrong?"

Boruto leaned in, his palm lying flat on his father's chest.

Naruto choked.

All at once his exhaustion was swept away by an overwhelming energy, a vibrant flourish of concentrated power seeping into his core through his palm so fast that it _burned_. His skin lit up in a glow of blue-white markings, their shape organic and changing and _achingly_ familiar. He watched as his father's eyes widened and then glazed with a familiar exhaustion.

He remembered the Hokage, a figure of unrivalled strength, sitting in his office with tired eyes.

Boruto pulled away, breathless and frenzied as this strange new energy rippled beneath his skin. His right hand latched onto his left wrist in some vain attempt at quelling the quiver of his arm. From the fading glow, black ink splashed across his skin in twisting markings that coiled up to his shoulder. And then, just as quickly, they were gone.

"The heck is…" No, that wasn't important. Not now. His attention snapped to Naruto, now lying limp on the bed with half-lidded eyes. Eyes that were looking at _him_.

Chakra. That energy was chakra he was feeling— _his father's chakra._

 _So so hungry…_

Like a pulse, the feeling was back. Boruto went rigid, stumbling back and away from his father as the voice beckoned him to try again. _I'm still hungry_ , it relayed to him. _It has been so, so long_.

Looking at how drained his father was, how could he?

Boruto buried the urge deep within him and ran, flinging open the door with force just short of tearing it from the hinges. He took to the streets in hope that putting distance between himself and the—the voice, or curse, or _whatever_ it was—the _thing's_ target would quiet the white noise buzzing in his head. It didn't. The moment he flung himself through the door, he felt it—dozens, _hundreds_ of sources of chakra just waiting to be devoured. People sleeping in their homes. Shinobi guarding the village perimeter. He ran and ran and ran and _ran_ and it _wouldn't go away_.

He ran until he was no longer within the Hidden Leaf, until Konoha's walls were nary a speck through the trees, until the voice inside faded out and the pull to collect was nothing more than a burning memory.

* * *

Lord Seventh sat at his desk with his robe hanging half off his shoulders. He yawned behind stacks of untouched paperwork and watched with shadowed eyes as his son's team leader flung open the door and stormed inside. Konohamaru usually had more tact than that.

"Lord Seventh—"

Naruto straightened his back, forced himself to create some sense of formality. He knew Konohamaru wouldn't care, wouldn't even bat an eye if he were found dead asleep in there, but maintaining the image of the Hokage was also a part of his job. The least that he could do was push his exhaustion aside to hear the man out.

Naruto folded his hands, one over the other. "Konohamaru," he breathed. "I'm surprised you're back so soon. Did something happen with the scroll?"

"It—it's not that, Lord Seventh," he stated gravely, with a quavering voice. Konohamaru steadied himself, took in a breath and steeled his nerves. "It's Boruto. He—he vanished from the excavation site. We've been searching for _hours_ but—"

He licked his lips, mouth dry and throat parched.

"I… I think something happened," he confessed in a barely audible murmur. "It's not like him. He may be a brat at times—most times—but he would never just walk away from a mission like that. And without a word? No. That's not Boruto."

Naruto's gaze fell to all of the paperwork still left at the end of the night and he rose from his seat, closing the distance between them. Konohamaru shifted beneath his stare. There was a quick, half thought out hand sign and a moment later there was a shadow clone seated at his desk in his stead.

He smiled, tired and worn, and placed a hand on Konohamaru's shoulder. "Let's go find him, then."

Even in times of uncertainty, Naruto had to remain the unending symbol of confidence. He smiled, because that smile was all he could give.

* * *

 **Hope you enjoyed! I'd like to keep a schedule for updates but haven't yet decided on one. I'll likely update every 1-2 weeks, depending on work, interest in the story, and how much free time I'm able to scrounge up. Let me know what you think so far. Until next time!**

 **Adieu~**


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks a bunch to everyone who favourited and reviewed chapter 1! We've got more cover art for the story, but well, FF doesn't allow image insertions so I can't show it off here. If you'd like to see it, it's up on AO3. Just search my username Anjelle or my wife's Blackberreh to take a look!**

 **For the update schedule: It'll be a new chapter every 1-2 weeks, but not on a specific day. It'll depend on how much I can get written between updates. I'm ahead right now and I'd like to keep it that way, if only to make sure the updates are semi-consistent.**

* * *

Kakashi Hatake was used to being called into the Hokage's office at odd hours of the night. His days in ANBU saw more than a few sleepless nights brought on by last minute missions of grave importance, and he could count more than a few times where he'd set out with a team before the break of dawn. So when Lord Third relayed to him that he was being assigned a mission, he wasn't surprised. Leaving ANBU didn't change much. There were thoughts, though, of what he would do with his team of genin if he were leaving the village.

He _wasn't_ leaving the village, it turned out, because his mission involved one of his very own charges.

Naruto Uzumaki was a name that had carried his interests for many years now. He was the son of Minato and Kushina, the son of his sensei, and the jinchuuriki for the nine-tailed fox that terrorized Konoha twelve years before. Naruto was a magnet for chaos and it came as no surprise that trouble would follow him home, whether he liked it or not.

Even Kakashi had to admit that this trouble was very Naruto-shaped, though.

The boy was twelve, maybe thirteen, coming up a little taller than Naruto. Visually, the boys had remarkable similarities, from their faces to their eyes and hair. This kid even shared the markings Naruto had on his cheeks, which had been a trait unique to him up until then. To someone who didn't know better, they could be mistaken for brothers. Minato and Kushina only had one son, though.

That wasn't something Naruto would be aware of.

Kakashi sighed, fixed to the rooftop of a neighbouring building. From where he sat, he could make out both boys sitting in Naruto's apartment through the window and decided that was as good a place as any to camp out. With the latest volume of _Icha Icha_ , of course.

He could see were Lord Third—or, more to the point, _Iruka_ —was coming from with his concerns. For all that he was determined to prove himself, Naruto was a gullible child. Some kid shows up out of nowhere, looking so much like their jinchuuriki, and then makes friends with him? There was something there that didn't sit right. But from what he observed, and he could have been wrong, it didn't feel like a scheme. At that current point in time, this Boruto kid had shown no signs of any transformative or deceptive jutsu that could cause him to look the way that he did. Behaviour-wise, he was awkward. There was something very human about that awkwardness, something that didn't mesh well with the malicious intent that Iruka was certain the kid was hiding behind that eerily familiar face. It was like he didn't know how to act, what to do or say.

Lord Third instructed him to use his own judgement in determining the intent of this strange new variable. So far, Boruto was benign. That could change.

The night was long. Halfway through his book, Kakashi observed the new kid standing over Naruto's bed. There was a strange, far off look in his eyes as he placed a hand on Naruto's chest. Then there was light, bright and loud and blinding as the boy's arm lit up like fireworks. Kakashi shoved his book into his pocket and readied his kunai when the glow abruptly faded, the boy stumbled back.

Boruto was out the door, flying down village streets like there were demons on his heels.

As much as he'd have loved to pursue, _that_ was not one of the main priorities of his mission. The first and most important task he was given was to assure Naruto's safety.

He dropped down to the streets and entered through the gaping doorway of the apartment. There was no need to check for a pulse; Naruto's breaths were visible in the rise and fall of his chest. Even if they weren't, the faint rasp of snoring broke the quiet. He was okay. Looked all kinds of tired, but unharmed.

With a sigh, Kakashi tapped the boy's cheek, eliciting a groan. Soon, barely-aware blue eyes fell to him. "Naruto. Are you okay? Does it hurt anywhere?"

Naruto hissed, rubbing his forehead as he tried with faltering coordination to pick himself up off the mattress. "Kakashi-sensei?" he questioned, blinking away his exhaustion. "What're you doing here…?"

Then he shot up, looking left and right and left again, his eyes wide. He patted himself down, grabbing at the fabric of his shirt where Boruto's hand once rested.

"Where's Boruto?"

Kakashi watched his panic with a critical eye, allowing it when Naruto rose to his feet and stumbled to keep steady. He may have looked recovered, but the drain on his energy was still evident.

"He left," Kakashi said simply, anticipating it when Naruto made to pursue and grabbing the back of his shirt to prevent it. "Now, now. I think you should rest up a bit."

Naruto didn't put up much of a fight when he was tossed gently back onto the bed. "What… What'd he do to me? I feel like I just ran a marathon or somethin'."

Kakashi sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. From the little he saw—and it _was_ only a little, that much was obvious—there were a few possibilities. Naruto being otherwise unharmed eliminated three of them. "By the looks of it, he drained some of your chakra. Not much, mind you. You'd be out cold if he'd taken any more."

"My chakra?" Naruto echoed, staring vacantly down at his lap, folding his hands together. "But why?"

"Who knows?" Kakashi shrugged, getting himself up from where he was crouched by Naruto's bedside. "I need you to stay here until I can find out."

"What? No, I gotta—"

" _I'll_ go look for your friend. You need to stay put." More than anyone, Naruto was the perfect candidate for a chakra drain like that. If this boy aimed to amass chakra for something malicious then Naruto's reserves were just what he needed. "Try to behave. I'll have him back before you know it."

Naruto's head hung low. He curled into himself with a muted nod. It was rare for the boy to be so obedient. "Make sure he's okay, would ya?"

"Of course."

Kakashi clapped Naruto on the shoulder, offered a reassuring squeeze, and set out into the night. He stretched, letting out what must have been his third sigh, and stared at the village bathed in pale moonlight.

"Alright, then," he breathed. From what he saw, he should avoid Boruto's open palms if they were to engage in combat. That… may make things a little troublesome.

With one final roll of his shoulders, he leapt into the air and vanished into the night.

* * *

Boruto's lungs burned with crisp, chilled autumn air as he skidded to a stop amidst the trees. He pressed back against a tree trunk, using it to keep himself upright as he caught his breath. The last time he ran like that was so far back in his memory that he couldn't recall just what it was that he was running to. Or from.

By the time he stopped, the village was a long ways back, no longer a figure in the distance. It was surprising that he covered so much ground in so little time. There was that energy, that chakra, tingling with life in his arms and legs. And now that he caught his breath, he was up to another run. Wasn't the least bit tired.

Huh.

He brought his hand up, stared at it, waited for the faintest hint of black ink still surfaced on his skin, but nothing. The voice was quiet, too—that strange, wordless voice. It kept urging him, nudging him so long as they were near people. Or, near sources of chakra, rather. Human chakra. He could sense it now, _somehow_. There was nothing around and it was only then when the urge died out within him.

"The hell is happening to me?" he muttered, more to himself than anything.

Boruto slid down the tree and huddled at its roots. He wrapped his arms around his knees and burrowed his head against them, and just breathed.

He wondered what Mom made for dinner tonight. He wondered if she was worried about him, or if she expected him to be away overnight for the mission. They were told they might camp in the ruins of the Hidden Time before they set out. Did he tell her that? He wasn't sure.

Dad probably wouldn't notice, even if he was gone for three, four days. He was always stuck up in his office, working for the sake of the village. Then again, maybe after a good few weeks his shadow clones would pick up on something when he didn't catch a glimpse of his son at home or in town, or maybe it would take Mom going to him, worried and desperate, for him to finally take notice.

Boruto was fully aware of just how bitter he was. This was nothing new.

 _Go back_.

He twitched. The voice, the so perfectly translated _intent_ , started back up again. A slight burn blazed across his arm and he rolled up his sleeve to watch the return of black ink bleeding across his skin. The markings returned. Instead of freaking out like each time before, Boruto stared hard, analyzing the patterns of their movement, trying to place the symbols that twisted and changed as they flowed up his arm. They were characters—unfamiliar characters like pictograms, and his mind supplied him with images of engravings along the walls of the World Temple. It was a part of the Hidden Time's culture, though that came as no surprise knowing that it was a Hidden Time scroll that did this to him.

But how did a scroll have that kind of power? No, it wasn't the scroll itself. There was something else—something that triggered when he touched the scroll. Was it a curse mark, maybe? A seal?

Boruto sucked at this kind of thing.

 _I'm hungry. Go back._

He twitched again, and his face contorted into a sneer as he clenched his fist. "Yeah, well, so am I!" he exclaimed. After that run, he regretted not finishing his ramen at Ichiraku. "Suck it up. I'm not going back to the village jus' so you can stuff your face with someone else's chakra."

It was in that moment that Boruto realized that maybe, just _maybe_ , he was talking to a curse mark. He scrubbed his hands down his face and let out a drawn-out groan. There was a part of him that wondered if he was still sane. Maybe that was the curse's aim—for him to lose it and be incapacitated by his own overwhelming insanity.

Even more insane was the fact that it _listened_. There was silence, and once more the markings dispersed into nothing. Boruto gawked openly at his arm. "Um." He flexed experimentally, as though the movement would jostle the curse back into visibility. "...Thanks?"

With a steadying breath, Boruto closed his eyes and focused. Something felt… different. About himself. It was more than the strange voice he was hearing—the voice that said no words yet could still be understood—and the markings that came and went on a whim. As he focused on himself, he felt something new, something foreign within him, and latched onto it. This _thing_ wasn't a part of him. It wasn't him but it was there, _inside_ him.

Deep inhale, hold. Exhale.

Boruto retreated inward. He wasn't sure how or why, or where to go from there, but he got a look into what he suspected was… his mind. Or something else internal, anyway. There was nothing but blackness stretching across the infinite expanse surrounding him, a void so empty and real that his curiosity faltered and he wondered just what he was trying to do. But that foreign presence was there, stronger than before, right there before him.

Through the darkness, pinprick yellow eyes stared back at him.

Boruto jumped, doubling back. _I'm so lame_. He broadened his stance, alert and ready for attack, but those eyes just stared, and stared, and continued to stare. So Boruto, the creative genin that he was, stared back.

The longer he stared, the easier it became to see the faint streams of chakra ebbing away from whatever was lurking in the dark. This chakra felt different from his own. It felt raw and chaotic, harder to control but oh so destructive. It seeped off the beast in waves. No wonder that thing was hungry, if its chakra was just bleeding out of it like that and it was a creature that _fed off chakra._

It was then that Boruto realized that the chakra leaving the beast was flowing out into the rest of his body, so much so that he couldn't even feel his own. The more he thought, the more he wondered if there was any of his own left.

"Hey," he called, metaphorically puffing out his chest, his mouth drawn into a thin line and fists clenched at his sides. "Did you eat my chakra?"

His only answer was an empty stare.

Boruto stomped his foot and strode forward a few steps. "You did, didn't you? _That's_ why I felt so tired before. What the _hell_?" He noised his frustration in a sound that could be called a hiss and marched on. The effect was instant, the shadowed beast bristling at his advance, and he wouldn't back down. "Who do you think you are?! You can't just—just go around stealing chakra with my body! I'm not just gonna sit back and let you do whatever you want, y'know!"

Despite the vague threat, no matter how fast he walked it felt like he made no advance. Those eyes didn't get any closer and Boruto felt as though they wouldn't unless the beast _wanted_ him to get close. So Boruto stopped, crossed his arms over his chest, and huffed. "...What are you, anyhow? Some kinda… curse, demon-thing?"

 _I'm hungr—_

"I know that you're hungry!" he snapped, digging his nails into his sleeve. "What am I supposed to do about that? I have my own problems to deal with right now. And—Sage, if something happened to Dad because of what you did—"

He stopped. Quiet fell as he rolled over those words, wondering just where he'd been heading. Dad would be okay… right? Boruto pulled away as fast as he could, and that _thing_ was still hungry, so it couldn't have gotten all of Dad's chakra. What would have happened if it did, if it just absorbed every ounce of chakra a person had? He didn't want to find out, but worried that one day soon he would.

Everything about him sagged. His shoulders slumped. He kicked at the formless ground and stole glances at that thing now sharing his headspace. It didn't seem all that malicious—not towards _him_ , at least—but it was definitely hungry. Boruto could feel it himself, this strange, hollow emptiness that needed filling. It was… confused, Boruto decided. Disoriented. Maybe angry. Angry and demanding to be _fed_.

Throwing a temper tantrum because Boruto told it 'no.'

Boruto only realized he was asleep when he woke up. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, the physical exhaustion of his body catching up to him. Even with all of that chakra stored up within him, it wasn't like it healed physical fatigue. The time he spent sleeping gave his muscles time to rest, and now they ached.

He didn't have to wonder what roused him; a source of chakra had entered his space. He followed its presence internally, sensing it move through the trees, and pried his eyes open when he felt it enter his personal bubble.

A half-lidded eye stared back at him and there was only a moment before he felt the cool brush of a kunai's edge to his throat.

Kakashi's eye crinkled in a smile. "I'll take it that you're Boruto, then."

Boruto swallowed and fought back the disorientation of sleep. "Kakashi." He bit back the urge to call him 'old man,' but using the former ANBU's name at all was clearly a mistake, and so was the familiarity with which it was said. "Did Naruto send you?"

"Well. Something like that." That lazy stare searched his person in a matter of moments before the kunai was lowered, Kakashi rising from where he was crouched before the boy. "Now. You're going to be coming with me."

A pulse rocked his body and Boruto bit his lip, reminded of the dream he was roused from. He wasn't so sure that it was a dream, after all. "I can't."

"You're going to," Kakashi stated with a breathy air of confidence. The kunai twirled around his finger before he set it back in its pouch. "Things may not go so smoothly for you otherwise."

Boruto let out a frustrated noise. "Bad things will happen if I go back there. I think. I don't know what's going on, I—"

"Bad things will happen if you stay here, too," Kakashi sighed. He bent down and grabbed a firm hold of Boruto's wrist to pull him up.

The moment that he did, everything stopped. Suddenly Boruto was an observer in a body not his own. His hand twisted and his fingers coiled around Kakashi's own wrist and then there was that burst of energy. Kakashi noticed—because _of course he noticed_ —and tried to tug away but it was no use, the chakra leaving his body at an alarming rate. A noise escaped the jōnin that sounded like a cross between pain and surprise, his knees buckling beneath him.

Boruto stood and stared down at Kakashi with cool indifference. The markings were there, glowing a path of blue-white light up his arm and to his neck. That emptiness inside filled quickly but unlike last time, there was no abrupt stop. It just kept going and going and _going_ and everything was _burning_ —

He snatched away his hand, shaking from the sheer surge of _power_ , and stared down with horrified eyes at the crumbled form of the Sixth Hokage lying motionless at his feet.

"K—" He choked on the name and tried again, "Kakashi?"

Boruto knelt down, nudging Kakashi's shoulder with no response. He pressed his fingers to the man's jugular and breathed his relief. There was a pulse, steady and strong. For a moment there, he thought he killed his father's teacher.

He stood back up and came to find that the voice was quiet. The foreign entity within him felt content, and everything was right with the world, save the unconscious man at his feet.

He shoved his hands into his pockets to hide their shaking. "...Sorry 'bout this."

With reluctance and a new surge of power that he didn't know what to do with, Boruto started walking. If he stayed, Kakashi would try once more to take him back to the village. Or, worse yet, he would see what happened as an attack _on_ the village. And then what? Would ANBU be sent after him? Where would he go if he couldn't return to Konoha?

The Village Hidden in Time. He needed to get back there, to get answers, or find his way back to his time, or to figure out if all of this was real or—or _something_. He didn't know. But he couldn't be there. Couldn't stay there.

Boruto's walking stride picked up, the crunch of dry grass beneath his feet shifting into the muddy splat of saturated dirt as the river neared, and then he was running.

* * *

The Seventh Hokage was familiar with the World Temple only through pictures that the archivists brought to his office when requesting he send a team to assist them. In person, it held a far more withered look to it, as though the roof could collapse at the slightest bristle.

Of course, if it so happened that Boruto fell victim to a collapse they _certainly_ would have found the kid beneath fallen rubble by then, so he wasn't too concerned.

Konohamaru came on as his lead, with the other two members of their squad left at home for this particular misadventure. They couldn't risk Sarada or Mitsuki disappearing, too. If anything happened to Sarada, Naruto wasn't sure whether he feared Sakura or Sasuke's wrath more.

"Right this way, Lord Seventh," Konohamaru muttered as they turned through a fake wall, lacking his usual energy as they descended what had been a hidden passage. "We have reason to suspect that he came this way. The traps left by the ancients had been triggered."

"I see."

Triggered with nothing trapped. Well, at least his son had good reflexes. Maybe he could take pride in that while mercilessly scolding the brat for worrying them sick.

The journey was long. The temple's underground catacombs were far more vast than its main body on the surface implied, stretching beneath the surrounding ground, beneath even the crumbling, weakened figures of residential housing that encircled it. Eventually, their walk came to an end before the already opened stone door of a guarded room. Within it stood an empty pedestal. Then, on the ground atop a cloth tarp rested an opened, blank scroll. Two archivists hovered over it, muttering to one another, their gloved fingers finding fixed points on the empty, yellowing paper.

The moment he entered, Naruto could already feel the small, fading traces of his son's chakra. He tensed as it billowed about the room, dispersing, and very soon it would no longer be recognizable.

Naruto clenched his fist but managed to keep the frustration off his face.

"We think he was here," Konohamaru stated, his eyes averted to the scroll. "When I entered, I found that on the ground. I thought it may provide us with some clues to what happened here, but… there's nothing on it. Right now the archivists are trying to find out if something used to be written there."

He nodded and his steps echoed through the room as he strode in further. His son's chakra was there, yes, so _achingly_ familiar. But there was something else, something old and weathered with time but still standing tall and firm against age and decay.

There was another source here, coming from the pedestal.

Naruto crouched before it, his eyes looming over ancient stone markings until they settled on a small, sloppy seal. His mouth twitched. There was a moment where he hesitated but that moment was short and unimportant. Fingers came up to brush along the seal's lines, and with one fell swoop he smudged it with his hand.

The seal broke and the moment that it did, everything lit up.

From behind the pedestal, Naruto could see familiar black pants bleeding through the still-fading light. He rose to his feet and before him stood a boy half his height, shuffling his feet, looking no one in the eye. His hands were together, forming the sign of the ram.

"Boruto—" Konohamaru stepped forward but Naruto held up a hand, halting him, and they waited.

"Is this—" Boruto ducked his head, his eyes finding the spot where the smudged seal resided. "Is this even working?"

He wasn't seeing them, and this wasn't Boruto. Not really.

Boruto rubbed the back of his neck and his sleeve slid down his arm. Glowing blue markings peeked out from underneath. Giving the boy a thorough glance-over, Naruto could see the same markings climbing up his neck. It looked similar to a curse mark. Similar, but not quite, and the symbols weren't any that he recognized.

Boruto's hand slid down from his neck and he stared at it. "You'd better not be pulling anything, y'hear? Here goes." Boruto faced forward, staring at a space above the pedestal, a space that ended up being Naruto's chest. "My name is Boruto Uzumaki," he stated. "I'm a genin from Konoha, from the time of the Seventh Hokage. I'm not… really sure who's gonna find this, so I thought I should get that out of the way first."

It was pre-recorded. Naruto figured as much.

"That's," one of the archivists looked up from the scroll with a raised eyebrow, "that's the imprint jutsu. The one we sent to Konoha. How did he…"

Naruto twitched but said nothing, a slow-growing understanding upsetting his stomach.

"I was on a mission with my squad—I hope you're the ones finding this. Don't tell Dad."

Naruto sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

Boruto shoved his free hand into his pocket. Apparently, he had to keep the other still to keep the recording going.

"Sorry for, um. Going off on my own. If it is you, I mean." Boruto kicked the ground. His movements made no sound, and it was eerie. "I found this place. Or I was led here… by this _thing_ inside of me. It's… I don't know _what_ it is—that's not the point."

Boruto's eyes had shifted downward with time, drawn to the ground at his feet. They snapped back up, straight ahead, and for a moment it felt like his son was _seeing him_. "I grabbed a scroll. It was stupid, I _know_ , but nothing to do about it now. When I did, it…" A frustrated growl rose up from his throat. "I'm not sure if this is an illusion, or if I really ended up in the past. Right now I'm banking on time travel because this ain't going to be any help otherwise."

Naruto shifted his weight, watching his son with crossed arms and a hard stare. Time travel, huh? Only his son would make such a fantastic mess out of a C-rank mission.

"In my current time, the Seventh Hokage is twelve years old."

Oh.

"That's the best landmark I've been able to find," he confessed. "I know it's not much to go on. Sorry."

The boy didn't know how lucky he was that the very same man he used as a landmark was the one listening to this message. For Boruto to know his father's age, they must have met up. That meant they either met on a mission or, more likely, the boy made his way back to Konoha. That was good. That meant that he knew his way, knew how to get around.

It also meant that he found Konoha and left again, and that set off a few alarm bells. Naruto wondered about that.

"I don't think there's much I can do where I am," Boruto said softly, and for a moment the image of him flickered. The glow of the markings on his arm blackened briefly before lighting back up. "I'm hoping someone back home can do… _something._ I think I found a good place to ride this out. There's a cave past the trees." Another flicker. "The coordinates—"

The image of Boruto froze mid-sentence, his markings now an inky black, and it stayed like that for a moment before vanishing in a puff of smoke.

Naruto closed his eyes and focused on breathing. He had to stay calm. He knew there were eyes on him, watching him, waiting for him to grieve his son, but he wouldn't let it end like that. He wouldn't because this wasn't a time for grieving, it was progress. Any progress was good progress.

He opened his eyes, lingering on the empty space where Boruto once stood, and turned around in a flourish. "You two," he called to the archivists, who jumped at his voice. "Have you found anything?"

One jumped to attention, rising to her feet. She almost tripped over her partner in her haste. "It appears there was writing on the scroll before. There are faint impressions left behind," she explained. "We can try to recover what's missing, Lord Seventh, but it's going to take time."

"Thanks. Do that." He looked over his shoulder at the rather distressed jōnin lurking by the pedestal. "Konohamaru," he called, and the man jumped to attention.

"Yes, Lord Seventh?"

Naruto smiled. It was tired, and a little forced, but it was warm and assuring and _necessary_. "We'll find him. Stay strong."

He meant every word.

Only twelve hours gone and he was already missing the kid's stupid, indignant face.

* * *

Like hell the future Hokage was going to sit back and _wait_. Naruto was a man of many things, but sitting on his arse waiting for someone else to get answers wasn't one of them. That wasn't his style. No, he was the type to do things for himself, whether anyone liked it or not. It didn't matter if he was disobeying his squad leader's orders, or that he didn't know just _what_ had happened earlier that night. Nothing changed.

A friend fled into the night after a brief confrontation. Naruto wasn't about to let him leave like that.

Despite what many people thought, Naruto wasn't stupid. He knew that if he followed after Kakashi, he would be caught. Then Kakashi would throw him in the direction of Old Man Hokage, or otherwise incapacitate him, and he'd have no _choice_ but to wait out the night. So, Naruto held back. He filled his stomach with instant ramen, chugged two cups of water, and did a lot of fidgeting.

A _lot_ of fidgeting.

Naruto sprang up from bed with an impatient growl, deciding that enough was enough and he was going to set out, whether Kakashi liked it or not!

He hesitated at the wall. This was to be his first time outside of the village; so far his only experience as a genin was running stupid D-rank errands around town with his squad. But he wasn't about to chicken out now, halfway there!

Naruto couldn't climb walls yet, he hadn't learned how, but he knew this village like the back of his hand. It wasn't hard for him to find a way over, even lacking such abilities; he was used to climbing Hokage Rock and used it to get around the wall. Simple. Honestly, it was a little _too_ simple. Unsettlingly so. But that was a problem for another time because Naruto had a friend to find!

He knew that Boruto couldn't have stayed in the village, that much was obvious. Sure, it was a possibility if Boruto wanted to keep snatching up chakra from people, but it'd be super dangerous, too. Konoha was the strongest of the Hidden Villages, after all. There were plenty of strong ninja around, and if Boruto went around attacking a whole bunch of civilians, he'd get ANBU on his trail in no time. So, at least to Naruto, leaving the village made the most sense.

The problem came after that. Konoha itself was a fixed point. Walls marked its edges, separating it from the rest of the forest, and searching through such a contained area would have been _so_ much easier. Unfortunately for Naruto, the understanding that his friend would have left just made everything three times tougher. Now, instead of the small space of the village, he was tasked with searching a whole damn forest and then some with no real tracking skills or hints as to which direction Boruto took off in.

Point-blank, it was hopeless.

Naruto's blind trek through the trees slowed to a halt and he groaned, hanging his head low. "Damn it! Why couldn't Kakashi-sensei take me with him? This would be so much easier!" He pulled at his hair in visible frustration, just to let something out before he started his journey up again.

All hope was not lost, though, because Naruto had something powerful on his side, something that had never failed him before, not even once.

Dumb luck.

It was maybe an hour or so into his search that, through the overgrowth at his feet, Naruto made out the prone body of a uniformed Konoha nin. Kakashi was lying motionless in the brush, his body still and limp, and Naruto weaved his way through the trees to get to his instructor with a pit of dread settling uncomfortably in his stomach.

"Kakashi-sen—"

He stopped when he saw movement, the slightest twitch, and hurriedly ducked behind a tree even though he knew there was no way the jōnin wouldn't sense him. Kakashi groaned, sounding tired and worn in a way that he never had before. The lazy, dismissive tone was gone from his voice, replaced by something closely resembling remorse as he picked himself up off the ground and ran a hand over his masked face and through his hair. His movements were jerky, his body stiff and sore, and he was slouching a lot more than usual.

Then, with all the resignation of an underappreciated teacher, Kakashi sighed.

"It's hard to believe," he breathed, "that after all these years, I can still be so careless."

Kakashi swayed slightly on his feet but pressed on anyway. Instead of jumping into the trees with a blink of an eye, he pressed on by food, on the ground, at a dragging pace.

Naruto watched from his hiding spot, blinking confusedly when he wasn't immediately found out by his teacher. His brows scrunched together and for a while he just observed. Kakashi was not only unaware of his presence but also didn't seem to be holding up all that well for a guy who, an hour before, was perfectly fine. He wasn't hurt anywhere; there was no blood and no visible signs of injury. He _was_ tired, though. Naruto thought he understood that particular brand of tired.

He grabbed at the front of his shirt, where he could still feel the fantom hand sucking away his chakra.

Shaking the thought away, Naruto followed as carefully and cautiously as he could. Kakashi, even in his weakened stated, would definitely have a lot better luck locating Boruto than he would. This was just the stroke of luck he needed to get to where he needed to be, and when he got there, er, well… Well, he'd just have to figure that out when he got there, wouldn't he?

This wasn't so hard, after all.

* * *

 **Adieu~**


	3. Chapter 3

**As always, thanks to everyone who left reviews, I loved reading 'em! And thanks to everyone who's still reading 3**

* * *

Boruto staggered to a halt as he stood before the falling gates of the Hidden Time. He breathed in, faced eastward, and breathed out. The very beginnings of sunrise were poking out on the horizon, a slow and steady wash of orange just barely cresting the black silhouettes of the world. He felt strange. There was all of this power built up inside him with nowhere to go, a power so much greater than what he was used to and just _itching_ to be used but, despite all of that energy, his physical body was begging for rest. He wondered if he could sleep, even now, even with everything that had happened in just one night.

Shoving all his uncertainties into the darkest corner of his mind, Boruto stepped through the gates and made straight for the World Temple.

The Hidden Time was located just beyond the dense forest encircling Konoha, through the furthest reaches of brush right where mountains and rivers cropped up on the edges of Fire Country. On his journey there, Boruto found more than one cave structure while hiking along a cliffside and made a mental note of them for later. If he couldn't figure out a way back to his own time—or a way to break the jutsu, if it was all a farce—then those would be half-decent areas to camp out at. If nothing else, caves provided shelter and dark clouds were looming to the south.

The ruins were still… well, _ruined_ , but now that he knew what to look for, Boruto could see that the landscape was undoubtedly different than it was the day before when he arrived with his team. In the future, there were tents set up, rest points for the excavators and archivists, even a camping ground. Excavations like those could take weeks or even _months_ , or at least that's what Konohamaru had gone on about during their travels. The excavators would stay there, away from their families for who knows how long, until every bit of history had been uncovered. Personally, Boruto didn't see the appeal.

After the excavators were done with the artifacts, the archivists would step in. A big part of their job was to analyze, record and report the teams findings, hence their job title, but just as important was the handling of the artifacts themselves. He heard through his shadow clone what that one lady had said about curses and seals—the one who was talking to Sarada and the others—and how they would have to be removed before they could really look into whatever it was they found. Thinking about that now was a bit of a kick to the knee, a clear warning against picking up unchecked artifacts. He wished that lecture hadn't been going on _as he was picking up the scroll_.

Lastly, an archivist's duty was to recover artifacts to their former quality. Maybe that wasn't always possible, but they did their best to assure everything was as well-kept as it could be, and no information was missing. If it was, they did what they could to get it back.

Boruto frowned, kicking a rock into the side of one of the smaller residential buildings around the temple.

"Now what?" he asked, waiting for an answer.

Nothing. Not a damn thing. The thing inside him had been perfectly silent ever since absorbing Kakashi's chakra. It seemed pretty pleased with itself, which annoyed Boruto to no end. It used him like a puppet. He didn't take kindly to being used.

He took a seat on the front steps of the World Temple and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, just thinking. Going back down to the level where he grabbed the scroll was a start. The scroll, at that point in time, _should_ have been untouched. Of course, that meant that a past copy of that _thing_ that latched onto him would be there, too… so he couldn't touch the scroll. Couldn't _use_ the scroll.

He groaned with all of the remorse of a defeated man.

Boruto had very little experience dealing with crises on his own. Konoha, in his time, was a pretty cool place. It was safe and there hadn't been a war since, well—since his dad was young. Though, in this time, maybe that war hadn't happened yet. In this time, that war was _imminent_. There was a chilling thought, but one that he could safely ignore if only for the fact that it _wasn't his problem_. Hell, he wouldn't even be born for a long time to come. It wasn't his place. So he boxed up any looming concerns of fire and brimstone and focused on the problem at hand.

Boruto had a strong support system back home, even if his dad was rarely suited to hold the title of 'supportive'. He had his mom and sister, and aunt and grandpa that meant the world to him. At school, he was surrounded by friends, people who could help him if something too big to deal with himself was standing in his way, people who _he could help in turn_. Sometimes things were repetitive, a bit boring, but at the end of the day the Konoha he knew was a warm and vibrant place and if he went to anyone with as messed of an issue as what he had on his plate now, they would step up to bat and give him the help he needed. Boruto was sure of that.

For the first time, Boruto had nowhere to turn. He had to find his answers on his own, with no one there to back him up. No Sarada to tell him that his plan was a bad idea. No Mitsuki to bail him out when that plan turned south. No Konohamaru to show him where everything went wrong.

But what did that matter, when there wasn't even a plan to start?

With a groan, he hung his head and closed his eyes. Well, he was here. This was where everything started. There were no chakra signals in the area, no presence in the trees or mountains or even the big pile of dust that now made up the Hidden Time. He was all alone.

He let out a strangled noise of frustration and denial and scratched through his hair.

"Aw, damn it! When did I get so sentimental?!"

He was starting to feel like his old man. That was never good.

Boruto jumped to his feet and turned sharply to face the towering temple doors. Being all mopey wasn't his thing. That moment was over, and now he needed to get this show on the road. He marched in, mirroring the path he and his team took down into the catacombs below, his hand gliding along the stonework wall. It wasn't long before a spark of chakra buzzed at his hand, his fingers sliding through the skillfully crafted illusion of a wall, and he made to turn. He didn't. A thought nagged at the back of his head, pulling his face into a frown.

No. What good would it do, going to a scroll that he couldn't touch? He didn't know the first thing about breaking seals or curses, and he couldn't imagine trying with no mentor, no instructional scrolls and no second chances to be a wise plan.

A thought prickled at the back of his mind.

 _"Everything you see here has been extracted, but either hasn't been looked at yet or hasn't had any cursed seals removed."_

 _"This one is safe, then?"_

 _"In fact, it's the only item that's been checked so far that_ doesn't _have any protective seals on it."_

Oh. Oh, no, there _is_ something that he can do.

Boruto never thought that the imprint jutsu his clone mocked right before he fell backwards in time would be the one thing that had the potential to get him backup.

His first roadblock, then, was figuring out where that damn scroll had been extracted from. Recalling the shared memories of his clone, Boruto followed the path his team had into the expansive room of tarps and collected artifacts several levels below. Except, of course, the room was empty in this time. The air was stagnant. It was before, too, but now even more so. He wondered how many hundreds of years it had been since the people of Time abandoned their village, how long ago a human last set foot down there.

The wondering ceased, because he realized that he didn't care all that much. Relics of the past mattered little to him, who was stuck in it.

"Shadow Clone Jutsu," he called out, his voice echoing in the dark expanse of the cavern, and he wished that he'd thought to bring a light.

A clone appeared through a puff of smoke and grinned at him. Then another, and another.

Four Borutos stood in a circle surrounding the original, and he nodded his approval. Something seemed different about them, though. Something more solid, more real, more _tangible_ than usual.

As much as everyone around him liked to go on about how little effort he put into his training, lately there was a fire lit beneath him where the shadow clone jutsu came into play. He was tired of seeing his father's, seeing them walking around town, watching them poof away the moment they ended a conversation. And he was tired of being compared to him, to the Seventh Hokage who could create a thousand to his mere four. For the longest time, Boruto was content with those four. They did what they needed to do even if they could only stay within eyesight, and in spars at the academy they were a vital asset in his arsenal. But now he was a genin. Now he was starting to take short, easy missions out of town. Now the stakes were rising, slowly but surely, and the pressure from the world and for his team was starting to crush him. Even if it wasn't meant to. Even if they didn't realize.

After the stunt he pulled yesterday, he supposed they would be well acquainted with the fact that he could now hold a clone a good distance from himself, well out of eyesight. There was a limit to how far his clone could get still; he wasn't crazy skilled the way that his dad was. Yet. He also only had enough control over his chakra to get _one_ clone to go such a distance; the last time he tried it with two, they both poofed away in a billow of smoke and shame.

But, well. If there was any circumstance that called for expedited growth, this was it.

His eyes shifted momentarily to the light coming from his arms. Glowing markings back in sight. It figured. He glared dully at them and remembered then that his own chakra had been devoured, replaced by that _thing's_ chakra, and wondered how much of a difference that would make, if any at all. What did it mean?

At the very least, that thing had a hell of a lot more reserves than he did, all nice and filled up with stolen chakra that doused him in more guilt.

He sighed and straightened.

"Alright!" he exclaimed with some faint tone of authority, his hands on his hips. "We don't know where the scroll was excavated from, so we're going to have to split up."

"We're just gonna vanish the moment you take your eyes off us," the first sighed, throwing his hands behind his head, watching the original with some faint show of boredom.

"Even if we find it," the second countered, kicking at the rubble, "it won't make a difference. How the hell are we supposed to understand what's written? They wrote in a different _language_ , smartass."

Boruto narrowed his eyes. Why was it always like this? He bet that Dad never had to deal with in-fighting amongst his _own damn clones_. Knowing that might have tugged at his own inferiority, but he brushed it aside. "Don't give me that!" They had a point, though, and he knew it. They were his thoughts. He knew them _well_. "Look—"

"What's the harm in trying?" the third interrupted, hands shoved into his pockets as he leaned back against the wall. "If we disappear, it'll just slow us down a bit. Not like we have anywhere to be. Bickering like this is wasting time, too. Let's just do it."

The first made to open his mouth but the fourth beat him to it. "Come on. We're Boruto Uzumaki. We can do _anything_ , got it? And we're not about to give up before we try."

Boruto's eyes widened. That may have been the first time his own clones stood up for him, and he may have been feeling a touch sentimental, and that was _stupid_ because they were _clones_ but he'd spent the last twenty hours with no one to rely on but himself so—

It was nice to know that he had his own back, if no one else did.

"You guys…"

The second clone made a choking noise. "Gross. Aren't you too old for waterworks? Jeez."

"Shut up," he spat, scrubbing at his eyes with his sleeve. "The air's dusty. I got sand in my eye—shut up."

The first clone rolled his eyes and sighed, twisting around to look down one of the multiple caverns. "In any case," he started, the mildest of the clones, lacking the familiar bite of the rest of Boruto's insecurities, "if we're doing this, let's get it over with. We're going to need light. Three?"

Three grinned. "On it." He ran up the stairs.

The rest waited with bated breath, the original following his mental link as the clone went all the way back to the surface without disappearing. Oh thank the Sage that worked, because if it hadn't he was going to be so many levels of frustrated.

There was a stretch of time as they waited for Three's return where the rest just hung around. There was at least some light filtering in through the cracks in the ceiling in that room, but the halls beyond were pitch black. Without a light source, they wouldn't be getting very far. Boruto didn't know any jutsu that could provide light and even if he did, he wasn't confident in having his clones try to use anything. This whole experiment, allowing four clones out of sight, was risky enough as it was without them pulling even more chakra from him for that crap.

Three returned with a few makeshift torches. At the very least, he was glad they taught basic survival in the academy; firemaking wasn't so hard with a little practice.

The search took a while, but not as long as it could have if he were working on his own. Which he _was_ , technically speaking, but the clones definitely expedited the process. There were five main halls leading from that room and each had their own branching paths to follow. He wasn't sure how long it was before Four stopped before what could only be described as a room of sealing where several texts were kept and, among them, a scroll tied closed with a red thread. He recognised it, the same thread with a golden clip that sealed the scroll shut, the same one that was handed to Sarada for safekeeping.

Four grinned. "Found you."

He disappeared into smoke along with the rest, and Boruto doubled back around to find the room for himself.

Boruto wasted no time in snatching the scroll out of the relief in the wall, knowing that it shouldn't have had a curse or seal protecting it. He realized his mistake when an inky-black mist lifted off the paper and dispersed into the air, his eyes wide and panicked as he tossed the scroll at the wall. It bounded off and rolled along the stone by his feet.

With a small yelp of surprise, Boruto patted himself down, threw off his jacket and lifted up his shirt in horrified search of any new markings across his skin, thankful to find nothing but the ones already on his arm.

On his arm.

They were back again. They were there, glowing the whole time that his clones were activated, and left the moment they did. Boruto wasn't stupid; even he could see the pattern of how those markings made themselves visible whenever he used his chakra, and whenever the thing inside him made its move in the outside world. He put that together fairly quickly. And they were there again, the short-lived glow flickering out into ordinary black ink. He wasn't using his chakra, though, which meant…

 _I ate it_.

Boruto swallowed, looking between his hand and the scroll. There was a round, seal-like marking on his palm, its rings coiling around one another, and it seemed to stare back at him.

This was just the paranoia talking. He hoped.

"There," he tried, momentarily losing his voice, "there was a seal, wasn't there?"

 _I ate it._

"A curse?"

 _It is gone._

 _Well,_ he thought with impressive levels of false optimism, _that's one mystery solved._

"Um," he said, stupidly. "Thank… you?"

The seal on his hand swirled and shrunk, and while all of the other markings faded away it remained, little more than a small black dot at the centre of his palm.

With a hesitance not usually seen in the son of the Seventh Hokage, Boruto gingerly picked the scroll up between his thumb and forefinger, dropped cross-legged on the stone and unclasped the thread holding the scroll closed. It opened to a yellowing but surprisingly well-kept paper with foreign black characters drawn across it. Those damn pictograms again. Boruto sighed, about to mark the mission as a 'failure' when he looked a little closer.

"Imprint… jutsu," he read, licking his lips. His eyes shifted across the page right to left, scrolling each line with frightening understanding as his jaw went slack. "You—"

He looked at his arm, but the markings hadn't returned. There was a moment where he warred between scared and excited, unsure of just how he was supposed to react.

"You're doing this, aren't you?" he asked, turning his hand over to stare at the dot of black ink. It didn't answer, so he tried again. "You ate the curse, and now you're helping me read this. I'm right. Don't tell me that I'm not."

 _I won't_.

Boruto blinked, his shoulders slumped, and he could feel a faint tug at the corner of his mouth as he fought back an unneeded smile. Ultimately, he didn't know what or how to feel about this whole thing. The beast—he had taken to call it a chakra beast, because for all that it _ate_ chakra, it also seemed to be _made_ of chakra—had forced its way inside him and leeched off his energy like a parasite, used him to feed off of Dad and Kakashi like a damn _vampire_ —

And now there it was, eating curses and translating a foreign language all in his head.

"Okay," he nodded, "alright, _now_ we're getting somewhere!"

Diving headlong into the scroll's instructions, Boruto muttered the words beneath his breath, his hands moving in lazy, half-formed signs as he worked through the jutsu, and practiced.

This was the first time something had gone right since he first landed here.

* * *

"Curses use chakra, right?" Boruto asked absently as he made his way through the fake wall, down a path he felt that he was starting to know a little too intimately. "Even when they're sealed. Is that how you ate it?"

 _Yes._

He offered up an acknowledging hum as he waded through the water and hopped off one path and down onto another, effortlessly avoiding the traps left behind that were starting to feel a bit stale. The chakra beast had been strangely responsive, and it was thankfully keeping its interests to itself and allowing Boruto to do what he needed to do. Like that, having that thing within him wasn't… well, wasn't the _worst_ thing in the world, even if he still hoped that they could extract it from him if he ever returned to his time.

There was a grim thought—never returning home. It was a good thing that Boruto had gotten so _good_ at suppressing his insecurities.

He came up to an open door with a pedestal centered in the room beyond, but before he entered he looked around at the pictures on the wall. Now that he could read them, maybe he should offer them more than just a quick glance. There was indeed a riddle, as he expected—something about the answer he sought buried in the depth of true fear. He wasn't so sure about that; the switch was in another room, in the mouth of a fox statue. Foxes weren't all that bad. Pests, mainly. The people of Time were _so_ melodramatic.

When he stepped in he saw more writing on the far wall, along the ceiling.

 _"Time is an ever-flowing current,"_ it read, also very dramatically. _"Learn from the mistakes of our great nation and move forward. Never look back."_

Boruto pulled a face, rubbing the back of his neck. "What if I can't help it?" he muttered, feeling somewhat insulted that a bunch of foreign pictograms thought they could give him a lecture. "It's your fault I'm here, y'know."

That time the chakra beast kept its thoughts to itself.

That was enough of a distraction. Boruto walked into the centre of the room and hovered over the pedestal, brows furrowed as he stared hard at the damn scroll responsible for this whole mess. He felt the beast within him stir and his stomach turned, a wave of nausea overtaking him that was hard to ignore.

"Guess this is your home," he muttered, keeping the unpleasant weight of his stomach from distorting his features. "I take it you don't miss it."

After thinking about it, Boruto determined that if he was going to leave an imprint anywhere, it had to be here. _This_ was where they would look for him. _This_ was where he disappeared. As much as he wanted to leave it in Konoha where people would have easy access to it, he knew that line of logic was all kinds of stupid. It likely would have been found many years before he _needed_ it to be found, before anyone who cared enough to try to get him back would ever get the chance. Then there was the knowledge that between this time and his own, Konoha was destroyed at _least_ once. The imprint seal could very likely be destroyed too. And who was the current Hokage? It certainly wasn't Dad. Grandpa Third, right? So leaving it in the Hokage office—not that he'd even be able to _get in there_ , with him being an unknown—would only screw up the past more when Grandpa Third inevitably found it. He couldn't leave it at home; his home wasn't _his_ yet. The academy—

There were so, _so_ many reasons not to leave it in the academy.

Above all, he attacked both Dad and Kakashi. He didn't mean to… but that didn't matter, did it? As far as they would be concerned, he would be labelled an enemy to Konoha and a danger to its people. There were no two ways around it.

At the end of the day, this was his first option. He had faith that Sarada, at least, would notice a strange seal left in the room her teammate vanished from. She was… good at that sort of thing.

With nothing to write with, Boruto crouched down and bit his thumb. A pinprick of blood oozed from the wound, and he used that to trace out the seal depicted in the scroll on the side of the pedestal. It was crude, but recognizable enough, and he stepped back to give himself some room, and took a breath.

He formed the first hand sign, his eyes facing forward. "Hey," he called. He knew full-well that he was using the beast's chakra now, that he didn't have much other choice without his own. "I'm going to be using more energy. Don't start throwing fits if you get hungry, got it?"

There was no answer, but he didn't need one. Boruto motioned through the hand signs before settling on the ram and immediately a seal of light formed circles at his feet. That was the start, then. It was recording. At least, he thought it was.

"Is this—" His confidence faltered as he eyed the corner of the fresh seal that he could make out from where he stood. "Is this even working?"

The seal called for his right hand to remain still, but not his left. He unfolded his left and rubbed the back of his neck, perhaps a little too telling of his insecurities, then brought it down to stare at the dot of ink on his palm. "You'd better not be pulling anything, y'hear?"

"Here goes." He clenched his fist and faced forward, imagining his squad standing right there in front of him. "My name is Boruto Uzumaki. I'm a genin from Konoha, from the time of the Seventh Hokage." He bit his lip. "I'm not… really sure who's going to find this, so I thought I should get that out of the way first."

Boruto said his piece, reciting his situation to the best of his abilities. He explained it all—all except the chakra beast because, in all honesty, he wasn't sure how much he _knew_ about that thing, and right now his biggest concern was getting home.

Before he closed it off, he recalled the caves he'd come across on his journey there. He could wait out there for anyone to find that message, he supposed. At the very least, he'd be away from any major chakra sources, out of the rain and away from any major events where he could cause a big change to the future.

Well, it was probably too late for that.

"I think I found a good place to ride this out. There's a cave past the trees." He felt his hand twitched; he wasn't used to holding signs for so long. "The coordinates… are…"

Boruto's voice failed him, his hand falling to his side when he saw a lazy grey eye staring back at him from the entranceway.

Kakashi leaned against the wall of the door, his arms folded across his chest, and he looked so completely, utterly _tired_.

Boruto stilled, his mouth gaping open, trying to form words that just weren't there. He hadn't even felt the man's presence, with how depleted Kakashi's chakra was and how absorbed he was in the message that he was leaving. A swell of relief filled his chest knowing that the Sixth was still okay, but it was quashed by the overwhelming worry of _what did he hear?_

Kakashi's eye crinkled into a smile, perhaps none too genuine, as he lifted a hand to wave at the blond. "Hey," he greeted casually. "After the night I've had, I could use some fun, and you seem to be having a lot of it. Let's chat."

Boruto stepped back and the recording seal at his feet broke. He cursed under his breath, dreading the fact that his message was left incomplete. He could try a second time, were it not for the Copy-nin looming ominously across the room, but decided that what he said was good enough.

With Kakashi there now, who's to say whether those coordinates would be accurate?

"Old man," he whispered and hated himself for it, his throat dry and hoarse. "I—what did you hear?"

Kakashi pushed off the wall, still smiling behind that mask, a smile that Boruto knew better than to trust. After all, this was the man that was to be the Sixth Hokage. This was the man who headed the village back when Boruto was just a boy. Boruto knew the man well—he was _not_ happy.

Well. Of course he wasn't happy. Boruto wouldn't have been happy in his position, either.

"Now, now," Kakashi eased and closed the gap between them. "No need to get upset. I just want to have a little talk with you, Boruto Uzumaki."

Oh. Oh no, oh no he _heard it_.

His eyes darted frantically around the room and he pressed his back to the wall, scrabbling his hands along the stone in search of another secret passage that could save him from this man's interrogation. There was nothing, at least nothing immediately obvious, and he balled his fist and slammed it back into the stone with a low growl of frustration.

He regretted it. Now his hand hurt.

Kakashi stopped at the pedestal, a hand in his pocket, and the smile fell. "That's quite the name you're carrying. I'm inclined to ask where you picked it up—"

" _It's mine_ ," he shot back, because his name was the one thing he wouldn't part with. He didn't give a _damn_ what it would change. "I didn't steal it, I—"

Kakashi held up a hand in pause and Boruto swallowed his words. " _But_ ," the jōnin continued, "I'm starting to paint a pretty good picture on my own. What you said in that message, how much of it was true?"

Boruto swallowed back his worries and grinned. He shoved down any thoughts that he should confess and hoped that a little more deception could keep him from screwing up the whole timeline, if he hadn't already. "What, that?" he asked with an easy tone, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I was just practicing my jutsu. Just saying whatever, y'know? To see how well it records."

"Of course." There was no belief in his voice but his smile was back as he bent down, his hand hovering over the still-drying blood seal. "So you wouldn't mind if I broke the seal and watched it over, then?"

"Don't—" He lurched forward, wide-eyed with his hand outstretched, and he hated himself for how _helpless_ it sounded. Kakashi's hand stopped just before the seal and he bit his lip and averted his eyes. He'd walked right into that.

"I thought as much."

Kakashi sighed, hefting himself back up. Boruto thought he saw Kakashi sway, but maybe he imagined it.

"You're going to be taking a trip back to Konoha with me," the jōnin stated, offering his hand. "We'll chat there."

Boruto stared wide-eyed at the offered hand, and in his mind there was forest and darkness and a prone body lifeless on the grass. He remembered what got him there. "I can't," he stated definitively, shaking his head. "You saw what I did, Old Man Kakashi. I can't." He pressed his lips together, his head hanging forward, and he stared at his feet. "There's… something inside me," he tried, unsure how else to phrase it. "It eats chakra. If I get too close to people, it takes control of my arm and drains them dry. You saw."

The echo of footsteps reverberated against the walls and Boruto looked up, his eyes wide, the jōnin standing just two feet ahead of him with a cool gaze.

"Well?" Kakashi prompted. "I'm waiting."

"I—" He ran a hand through his hair, searching his mind for remnants of the chakra beast. It was there, but content. "It's…" There was no urge, no rush to dive in and leech away the last of Kakashi's chakra reserves, and he let out a broken, disbelieving chuckle. "It's not hungry."

"There, see? It—"

Boruto broke out into a wry grin and launched himself forward, wrapping his arms around the jōnin in a fit of slightly manic laughter. "It's not hungry!"

Kakashi cringed, stumbling back from the boy's weight and his own failing stamina, and stood there with his arms awkwardly hovering over the child. "That's… good," he tried, but it lacked his former cool indifference.

Boruto pushed himself off the Kage-to-be with a grin, putting some distance between them. It was pretty clear that this Kakashi wasn't all too fond of invasions of his personal space. Boruto could respect that, if only because he was too elated to care. "I just have to keep it fed. Somehow. And—and then, if I do that, maybe it won't—you know. Thanks, Old Man!"

"...Right." Kakashi cleared his throat and recomposed. "That's all well and good, but as it stands I still have to return with you. Understand?"

His smile faded and he looked away, "But…" He still needed to figure out how to amass chakra in order to feed the thing. Before he did that, how could he return to the village, a place _surrounded_ by morsels of human chakra? It seemed… a bit stupid, really.

"Relax," Kakashi said smoothly.

Boruto took a deep breath and looked back up, and—

He paled, seeing a familiar mess of blond hair poking through the doorway. Naruto was leaning into the room, eyes narrowed, and the moment he saw that Boruto was looking, he placed a finger over his lips.

Kakashi didn't seem to notice. With how drained he was, maybe he was too tired. Too distracted. That seemed to be just what Naruto wanted, because he slipped quietly into the room.

It came as a shock that this version of Naruto could be any sort of _quiet_.

"I'm well aware that there's more going on here than you stealing people's chakra," Kakashi continued. "I'm not blaming you. But that doesn't matter right now. My first priority is getting you to the Hokage."

"...Right," he answered absently, his eyes locked on the awkward sneaking that his father was doing in the background. It looked so… clumsy.

Naruto's grin did little to reassure him.

"Once there, we can—"

Naruto lunged at Kakashi, wrapping around him like a monkey, one hand covering his visible eye. Caught off-guard and already weakened, Kakashi stumbled back, leaning to try to keep balance.

Boruto was so confused. _So confused_ , but there Dad was, grinning ear-to-ear like an idiot—

"Do it!"

Do what?!

Boruto flailed internally for a bit before raising his hand to his forehead, making a sign and—

This was his first time using the paralysis jutsu outside of training. Kakashi went down, his body stiff and immobile as through restrained with ropes, and Naruto leapt triumphantly into the air.

"Alright!" Dad cheered and instantly ran over to Boruto, grabbed hold of his hand, and pulled him from the room. Before he was given any time to think, he was being dragged through the passages, up the stairs and out of the temple, his dad giddy and laughing like they were having the time of their lives.

Boruto gawked openly at his father's back with owlish eyes, at a loss for words. He didn't know why they were running; he just listened to his dad, which probably wasn't the smartest thing to do because his dad was currently the same age as him, living in a cramped apartment, eating junk food all day.

"Naruto?" he called, looking back. The temple was shrinking behind them. "Where are we going?"

"Away from Kakashi-sensei! Duh!"

Boruto's mouth twitched. "I—I get _that_ , but—"

"We gotta hurry!" Naruto exclaimed, his smile fading as he looked left then right, then ducked further into the brush. "Kakashi-sensei won't stay down for long. Crap, crap! Which way—"

Boruto watched his father's flailing. It was weird, seeing him like that, all panicked and flustered. He shot forward, dragging his father along as he recreated the path to the caves in his head. "I know just the place!"

Naruto never questioned it, grinning, allowing himself to be pulled.

"Kakashi's a tracking ninja, right?" Boruto asked, mulling that over in his head. He bit his lip. Those nin-dogs of his would be a problem… "We'll detour towards the river—lose our scent there, y'know?"

"Got it!" Naruto laughed, no questions asked.

Boruto may have not known why they were running, but he was starting to realize that he didn't care.

* * *

 **Adieu~**


	4. Chapter 4

**Happy New Year!**

* * *

One thing that nagged at Kakashi was the location. From what he knew, there was little public knowledge of the Hidden Time. It was doubtful that Boruto just happened upon it, even if that could be true, were he travelling cross-country. Boruto's business lied within Konoha. Kakashi didn't miss the way that his face contorted with something more complex and contradicting than uncertainty whenever the village was brought up. It was important to him. It meant something to him.

He grew up there.

Kakashi brushed the dust and rubble off of his pants and flak jacket, his eye shifting warily from one wall to the other, and he shuddered. Everything was cracked and crumbling and aged. This room held up better than most of what he saw on his descent, but it wasn't enough to quell the bubbling uncertainty sloshing around in his gut. Thoughts of the roof coming down on him were enough to turn him on his heel and make his way back out the front of the temple, and he was only relieved when there was no longer a roof over his head.

Kakashi eyed his summoning hand, mulling over the idea of bringing Pakkun to his aid. For how little chakra he required, Pakkun was an exceptionally useful summon. But Kakashi's chakra reserves had been so depleted that he lost consciousness, and while he had a pair of boys to find—one being a jinchuuriki with amazing chakra reserves, and the other—

The other carrying a creature that fed off of chakra.

His eye widened slightly, and then his shoulders sloped and he rubbed the back of his neck. He wanted to give his chakra more time to recover, figuring there was no rush because, for all that he was troublesome, Boruto didn't seem all that malicious. But now that he made the grim connection that the parasite just ran off with its ideal victim, it didn't seem he had that luxury.

Kakashi bit his thumb and pressed his fingers to the ground. In a billow of smoke appeared a small pug, staring up at Kakashi with half-lidded eyes.

Kakashi sighed, offering the hand Boruto had used to leech his chakra. "I have a scent for you to track."

"What, no hello?"

"I'm in a bit of a rush, if you don't mind."

* * *

Boruto was very wet.

In the grand scheme of things, following through the river for an extended period of time was a great way to keep the tracker nin from catching up with them. That didn't mean he had to like being drenched from the waist down—or the waist up, in fact, as his loving father took his first notable moment of distraction to shove him off his foothold and into the ice-cold water. When he surfaced, Naruto was rolling around in the dirt laughing—getting his scent everywhere .

That was his excuse when he dragged his old man right down into the river with him.

Boruto wrung out his jacket at the mouth of the cave and then tossed it aside, scrunching up his face at the splat it made as it hit the ground. His shirt was sticking uncomfortably to his skin and the white fabric was now a translucent beige that made him grimace. He felt gross, caked in mud and grime and whatever else might have washed onto him in the river.

He took one last look at the high-noon sky and all its picturesque blueness and clouds, mocking him for his lack of sleep and wish for it to just be night , and then turned back into the cave with his hands on his hips.

Dad was sitting cross-legged by the fire, the top of his orange jumpsuit shoved in the corner as he held up his hands to the open flame. And for all that they may as well have been fugitives at that point, he was smiling.

Boruto shook his head, but there was a tug at the corner of his mouth that he couldn't fully suppress. He sauntered over and dropped down across from Naruto, sitting as close to the fire as he could without the risk of a spark setting his hair alight.

"So," he started, lifting his own hands to feel the heat. "What's all this about?"

Naruto looked at him, raising a brow. "What'd'ya mean?"

Boruto rolled his eyes. "Don't gimme that. Why'd you come after me?"

"'Cause we're friends," Naruto stated, as though it were the dumbest question in the world. "And you looked scared."

Boruto pulled his mouth taut and averted his eyes to the flames. He buried the twinge of embarrassment he felt beneath a layer of who-cares-it's-only-Dad. The crackle and pop of fire filled the silence as he collected his thoughts. "I attacked you."

Naruto shrugged. "It's gonna take more than that to take out the future Hokage, y'know."

He twitched, stealing a glance at his father. He thought… but the more that he thought, the more he wanted to kick himself. Dad was never the type to hold a grudge. Dad had a temper, sure—like father, like son—but it was quickly abated and rarely lingered. How could he ever expect differently?

A soft chuckle rose up from Boruto's throat and he leaned back, propping himself up with his arms. "Figures," he muttered. "I, uh… I'm sorry. 'Bout what happened. I didn't mean to do that."

"I know," Naruto stated simply. "That's why I came to rescue you."

Boruto tilted his head. "Since when do I need rescuing?"

"No one ever gets away from Kakashi-sensei, y'know!" Naruto laughed, crossing his hands over his chest, his eyes closed and squinted. He looked weirdly fox-like. Mischievous. "No one but us!"

A slow grin stretched across Boruto's face. "Did you see the look on his face?"

"I was too busy runnin'."

"Old Man Kakashi was so surprised," Boruto stated, lowering further onto his elbows. "He didn't see you coming at all . And then, when I used the paralysis jutsu—"

"That was so cool! You gotta teach me that!"

He raised a brow. "The paralysis jutsu? What, you don't know it yet?"

"Nu-uh. I, er… I mean…" It was Naruto's turn to look away as he reached around to rub the back of his neck. "I don't know much. I've got my sexy jutsu—"

"Your what?"

"—and my shadow clones. I didn't… do well in the academy, I guess."

Boruto stared in open disbelief. How could the future Hokage not know such a simple jutsu? It was D-rank. Shouldn't he have been a child prodigy or something? One of those people who was born skilled, learned fast, and outclassed everyone around them? Though, the image of someone like that didn't mesh well with the image he had of Dad, young or old. This kid was all over the place, a bit of a mystery, with a thought process that only he could understand. And the old man? Well. He was a good-for-nothing who still had trouble getting himself out of bed in the morning. At least, Boruto thought that he still had trouble getting out of bed. The last time he went to wake his father up… when was that, exactly? It had to have been a while back; his father rarely ever came home anymore.

Boruto never asked to know much about his father's past. What did it matter to him what Dad was like growing up? Who cared if he was a prodigy or a good-for-nothing back then when he wasn't even there for them now? In a way, his lacking interest was a statement. Maybe his father never saw it that way. Maybe Dad didn't even notice. It didn't matter.

Dad was the Hokage first and a father second.

He was pulled out of his thoughts when he saw that grin on him, leaning in, and he leaned away. "...What?"

That look on Naruto's face did not scream 'benevolent Hokage.' That look promised trouble.

"Teach me," Naruto demanded, scooting closer. "You owe me for the rescue."

"I'm not—" He frowned and pushed himself back up. "Why did we run, anyway?"

"Kakashi-sensei was gonna take you back to Konoha, right?" Naruto answered the question with one of his own. He leaned over, snatching a branch off the cavern floor to roll the logs and stoke the fire. "You didn't want to go, so you shouldn't have to."

"Oh."

Simple logic. It suited Dad. In the moment, he'd been beyond confused. Kakashi seemed to understand the situation, to some extent. He was, at the very least, aware that the attacks were not of Boruto's own will and that he had little control in the moment. That was… good. It felt good . That whole time, he'd been worried they'd all see it as an attack on the village, see him as some sort of enemy to be dealt with accordingly. Kakashi showed him differently.

With that sort of support, he'd wondered why Dad rushed the old man and had them high-tail it out of there. Then again, Dad probably hadn't known what was going on—just saw a chance to help and took it.

Boruto lowered his head, shadowed his face behind his bangs and hid a smile.

Stupid old man.

He sucked in a breath, steeled himself, and faced forward. Naruto was in his direct line of sight. He held up his hand, palm facing out, to show the pin-prick dot of black ink ever-present on his palm. Naruto leaned in for a closer look, squinting, and he didn't need to say anything for his questions to be understood. Boruto figured that, after everything, Dad deserved at least some level of honesty. Especially as a victim. "This," he said, and hesitated, "is a curse mark. I think. I'm not sure."

Naruto made a sound of feigned understanding and reached out, poking the dot and eliciting an eyeroll. "From what?"

"I—" Boruto cleared his throat to suppress his embarrassment. There was no way that he was telling his father that he waltzed up to an ancient scroll and snatched it off its pedestal without a second thought like some sort of idiot. "That's not important! Point is, ever since I got it there's been this… thing sealed inside me, eating my chakra. A chakra beast."

"Chakra beast?" Naruto leaned back and crossed his arms again, his face scrunched up as he mulled that over in his head. "What's that?"

"Hell if I know!" His arm dropped to his side, fist balled and white-knuckled. "Problem is, it's not happy with just my chakra, so it tries to get it from other places. Like you and old man Kakashi. It uses me for that. What happened last night—I didn't want that. I promise."

Naruto hummed as though he was thinking it over, then nodded. "I believe you."

Well, that was easy.

It was like a weight was lifted from his shoulders and Boruto fell back, his back meeting the cool rock beneath him, and he watched the flickering flames light up the roof of the cave in an orange hue. It was hard to keep his eyes open. Suddenly he was reminded of how little sleep he'd gotten ever since arriving in this time, something that his body was all too eager to remind him of as his every limb melted into the ground like jelly.

"Hey, hey," Naruto's voice sounded far away, but Boruto wasn't out yet. He acknowledged Naruto with a short grunt. "I get why you left. But…"

"Mm?"

Naruto scooted closer, hovering above his half-asleep companion. "But Kakashi-sensei and old man Third'll listen if you explain things. They're not like the rest. And you can stay at my place. No strings attached."

Boruto let out a soft snort. "I don't need your pity." He said that, repressing the soft bubble of emotions that came with Dad's support.

"It's not pity," Naruto pouted, nudging the prone body with his foot and eliciting an annoyed groan. "I can relate, is all."

Boruto had half a mind to ask what he meant, but as he slipped away into sleep he just couldn't be bothered.

"Guys like us gotta stick together, y'know?"

* * *

A long shadow cast across Naruto's sleeping body, his son hovering over him with a mischievous grin.

Boruto woke to the bright hues of sunset as they leeched their way into the cave. As his stomach twisted and complained, the last time he ate being at the ramen bar, he gathered his sleep-laden thoughts and checked their clothes. Dry as a bone. He was grateful for that as he slipped on his jacket, but his nose scrunched up at the feel of it. Dry, but not clean. Even after the little river dive they took, he stunk to high heaven.

All he wanted was a bath, a meal, and a day in bed playing video games.

Naruto was snoring, sprawled out unceremoniously across the cave floor, lying on his back. Some things never changed; Naruto then was a mirror image of the Naruto of decades later. It brought Boruto back to the good ol' days and he wanted nothing more than to be vindictive. But this wasn'tDad—not entirely—and he knew well enough to hold back any ideas of an unsavoury awakening. Even if the look on Naruto's face would have been worth it.

"Rise an' shine, Sunshine," he greeted loudly, tossing the top of Naruto's orange jumpsuit down onto the lump of sleeping genin. Naruto stirred and groaned, the fabric covering his face, and patted around until he found the end of it, pulling it off his head and glaring through squinted eyes. "Let's get a move on, Princess."

Naruto looked much too tired to care for the taunting, lurching upright like a zombie and staring vacantly at nothing. He blinked, slow and uncomprehending, and then scratched his head with a yawn.

Boruto rolled his eyes, nudging Naruto with his foot. "Up, up, up. We're burning daylight. I wanna be out and moving before we're left walking through the dark with a tracker nin on our trail."

"Mm?" Naruto's head turned slowly, finally registering the one talking to him. Dark circles made him look older than he was, tired in a way that confirmed for Boruto that this really was the Seventh Hokage that he knew. His old man always looked like he'd gone three weeks straight on caffeine and no sleep. "Where we goin' now?"

Boruto turned around in a flourish and wandered over to the mouth of the cave, looking out at the warm evening colours swathing the forest. He took a deep breath, if only to fill himself with some false sense of certainty. "Konoha."

Naruto blinked, finally awake enough to lift his arms, and he worked his hands around his jacket, fumbling to pull it over his arms. "I thought you didn't wanna go back."

"Yeah, well." Boruto leaned his forearm against the cave wall and smiled. He wouldn't say aloud that Naruto's support gave him courage, or that Kakashi's reaction gave him hope. He wouldn't, because both admissions held implications he rather not deal with at the moment. "Things change. I'm hungry."

The mention of food had Naruto whining as he wrapped his hands around his middle. "I could go for some Ichiraku…"

Boruto snickered. "You can't just eat ramen every day, y'know."

"But—"

"Tell you what," he interjected, spinning around to face Naruto, hands on his hips. "When we get back, I'll make us food. How's that sound?"

"You can cook?" Naruto looked skeptical.

Boruto stuck up his nose. "Not to brag or anything, but I'm pretty awesome at whatever I do." Of course, he couldn't say that he helped his mom with dinner sometimes, because as far as Naruto knew, he had no parents. Even Dad could cook—in the future, at least—and Boruto may or may not have picked a few things up from side-eyeing him on the occasions where he cooked for Mom, rare as they were in later years.

"Uh-huh." There was very loud disbelief in Naruto's voice. He dropped it there, though, and finally picked himself off the ground, looking just as much asleep as he was ten minutes ago. "Alright, 'm up…"

Boruto threw his fist into the air and marched forward. "Hell ya! Let's go!"

They started the long trek back to the village with a lot of one-sided chatter on Boruto's end—Naruto was still too tired to form coherent sentences, apparently. That was fine. Boruto was fine with filling the silence. He was used to it. More than that, though, was the desire to keep his father from thinking.

If Naruto thought too much, he'd want them to go back.

Boruto wasn't stupid. He knew that returning to Konoha wouldn't be as easy as walking unhindered through the front gates and signing in. He was well aware that Kakashi was tailing him long before the first chakra-draining incident, that important people had taken note of his presence in the village and gotten wary, and that he would have a lot of questions to answer if he planned on going back. He suspected that Kakashi witnessed the incident with Naruto, that he was watching all-the-while, and that he was reporting directly to the Hokage.

Boruto knew that when they made it to Konoha, he wouldn't be allowed to just go right back to Dad's apartment. But if he didn't return to Konoha, where would he go?

Konoha was his . His one-and-only, precious home. Time could never change that.

Being dragged back home by nin-dogs felt too much like losing so, at the very least, Boruto was going to go back on his own terms. Boruto Uzumaki didn't just lose. Not without a fight.

* * *

If nothing else, the kid was tenacious.

Kakashi was impressed, if a little annoyed, when they lost Boruto's scent at the river. It was hardly enough to shake him and Pakkun, of course, but it pained him to admit that it slowed them down. By noon, he was unamused. By evening, he was all sorts of done with the whole ordeal. On the brightside, his chakra made a full recovery. But this little game of cat and mouse was drawing on too long for his liking. They were catching up, though. Steadily.

It occurred to him that he was being led in a circle. After the ruins, the boys put more distance between themselves and Konoha, but later dipped back around and were headed straight for it. He found their campground off the cliffs at the edge of the forest. Kakashi wasn't sure what their goals were, heading back to Konoha after sending him on a Sagedamn forest-wide scavenger hunt, but he wasn't complaining. If they wanted to make it that much easier for him to bring them home, so be it.

There was one concern that cropped up when he thought of bringing them back, though, and that was what to do about Boruto's little issue. The kid was right; it would be dangerous to keep him around people when he had no control over his curse. He was sure that something could be done about it, though. If they could seal the nine-tails, they could seal a parasite.

He just hoped this particular seal didn't claim lives.

"Boss," Pakkun called.

Kakashi's eye lifted lazily to the trees ahead of him. "I know."

They were close enough that he could scent them. This was good, but he made the mistake of being too trusting and sympathetic twice now and he wasn't about to go in with the same proffered hand he had before. He knew now how stupid that show of trust had been. Maybe he was getting soft over the years, because his time in ANBU taught him that even a child could be used as a weapon, that it didn't matter the age of his target and that he should never underestimate them. He let his guard down because one was Naruto, and the other looked like Naruto, and looked scared.

Minato, your son is turning out to be a real pain.

Kakashi observed from the trees. Below, two blond genin walked leisurely through the brush, looking similar enough that they could have been mistaken for twins. Boruto was leading the way, his hands behind his head and a grin on his face, no longer with that forlorn look he held onto all last night. Behind him, Naruto was dragging through the grass with a yawn.

"How much longer?" Naruto whined.

"A while ," Boruto replied, rolling his eyes. "You asked like ten minutes ago."

"But I'm hungry, y'know."

"And I haven't eaten since Ichiraku. We're genin—suck it up."

Kakashi withheld a sigh. Of course they were bickering. Naruto's complaints were nothing of a surprise. Naruto was Naruto. But Boruto seemed different, more sure-footed. Grounded. Last night, he'd been so worried and anxious that he may as well have curled up into a ball and shut out the world.

"Hey," Naruto called after some time, unaware of the shinobi hiding within the canopy of trees, "how's the thing?"

Automatically Boruto looked down at his hand, the same one he used to leech chakra, and wiggled his fingers. "Quiet. Hasn't said a damn word to me all day. Not hungry yet."

"And when it is? What's your plan?"

Boruto hummed, crossing his arms and furrowing his brow. "Mm… we'll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it."

Well. That was a very different approach from the one he took last night. A lot more reserved, a lot more confident. Were that his attitude before, they may have gotten somewhere. Somewhere that didn't include a cross-country trek across the Land of Fire.

Kakashi was not bitter.

"I'm not letting it do whatever it wants," Boruto continued, his fist clenched shut as he twisted to face Naruto, grinning. "Not without a fight."

That was a lot of certainty directed Naruto's way. He wondered where it came from, but seeing the way the kid was looking at Naruto, it wasn't hard to figure out. There was a distinct possibility that the boys were related in the future. No, Kakashi would place it closer to certainty. They looked alike, uncannily so. This wasn't a henge, at least that much was clear, and the similarities they shared were the kind only seen through family ties. Looks like that were no coincidence.

'Son' crossed his mind, but he quashed it. The Naruto he knew was twelve years old and he didn't want to think of that kid having kids of his own. It made Kakashi feel his age and then some.

He sighed, and for a moment Boruto's eyes met his. There was a discreet wave, one unknown to Naruto who was too busy being tired and miserable to take notice, and then the moment was over and Kakashi was left faintly amused.

Perceptive kid. If he knew that they were being watched that whole time and hadn't tried to retaliate, that meant Boruto had accepted what would happen when they arrived in Konoha. Naruto was a different matter entirely. Naruto was unaware. Undoubtedly.

This was a mess just waiting to happen.

It was dark by the time they arrived at Konoha's walls. The guard stationed there looked confusedly between the boys, his eyes wide and uncomprehending.

"Uh—" He tried to find his voice, pointing between them. "Two Narutos?"

"Boruto," the fugitive corrected with a grin, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Boru…" The guard snapped his fingers. "The kid from the other day!"

"You got it, Old Man."

"But how—"

The guard swallowed his words when met with the smiling eye of Kakashi Hatake as he arrived behind them in a whirl of wind and leaves. Rather than question it, he shut his mouth and allowed them entry without any interrogation. By that point, most of the villagers were aware of Kakashi's former ANBU status. They didn't question it when strange things happened around him. Even after his retirement from ANBU, his position close to the Hokage had people expecting those same sort of strange, secret missions to still be his domain. Two Narutos was hardly the strangest thing their minds could come up with.

Naruto followed the guard's eyes and jumped away when he spotted his instructor looming behind them. "Kakashi-sensei?!"

Boruto twisted around, met Kakashi's eye evenly and waved over his shoulder as he walked through the gates. "Yo. Guess it's about that time."

Kakashi followed behind, his hands in his pockets, and Naruto hurried to keep up. Once inside the village, he caught Boruto staring up at Hokage Tower.

"This way," Naruto directed, nodding left towards his apartment. "Hurry, I'm hungry!"

Boruto looked over with a smile and Naruto's face fell. He turned to Kakashi and sighed. "We should get going, huh?"

Naruto's shoulders slumped. "What'd'ya mean?" He looked from Boruto to his instructor and back again. "Kakashi-sensei? What's going on?"

Kakashi sighed and stretched. He placed a firm hand on Boruto's shoulder—there was hesitance there, a mild concern that there would be a repeat of the last time they came into contact, but nothing happened. "Your friend here has some business with Lord Third," he said simply, heavily, with all that implied.

"What?" Naruto fidgeted and forced a smile. "O-oh, um. He's just gonna to talk to old man Hokage?"

It was Boruto's time to sigh. He stepped forward, closing the distance between them, and poked Naruto's forehead. "I'll be back when I'm back, 'kay? Let's take a raincheck on dinner."

"...Fine."

Despite the word of agreement, it was pretty clear that Naruto felt anything but okay as he watched the jōnin walk off with his buddy. He stood there in the shrinking distance, his body stiff and hands white-knuckled at his sides. Kakashi caught the way Boruto glanced back, too, even if it came off a lot more concerned.

Boruto made his own way to the Hokage's office, headed straight for it. Kakashi didn't have to say a word. It was quiet as they walked and Kakashi almost pulled out the copy of Icha Icha that he had in his pocket but thought better of it.

"He's still standing there," Boruto observed, and Kakashi craned his neck around to see an orange and yellow speck shrinking into the distance. Boruto chuckled, the sound broken with uncertainty, his face lowered to the ground. "That stupid old man. This whole time he's been complaining 'bout how hungry he is. He should go eat already."

Kakashi hummed in acknowledgement, distinctly recalling the bell test and the way Naruto tried to steal lunch for himself. That was a selfish, dishonourable move if ever there was one. But there was more to it than that, and Naruto wasn't as selfish as he first appeared. He had grown since then, too, even if only a little.

"He's not going to, though, is he?"

Kakashi let out a soft snort. "It's doubtful."

"Really…" Boruto scratched his head, his steps slow and dragging as they came to stand before administration. His tone was somber and soft and Kakashi would have been fooled, had he not seen the ghost of a smile behind the kid's bangs. "What a stupid old man."

* * *

Hiruzen leaned back in his chair and twisted around to look out the window at the blackened sky. Night fell once again. In all honesty, he was surprised that Kakashi had yet to return with the unknown child that so resembled their young jinchuuriki. In his last report, Kakashi explained that Naruto had been assaulted during his watch and, in that time, this Boruto Uzumaki child fled the village. Actions like those spelled guilt, unfortunate as that may have been, and it seemed Iruka's suspicions were right on the mark.

According to Kakashi, Naruto was uninjured. This unknown child had drained his chakra—some, but not all. He stopped partway through of his own accord. It was relieving to hear, knowing just how large Naruto's chakra reserves were because of the nine-tails.

He shifted where he stood and sucked in a deep breath of smoke from his pipe as he stared out at the stars, mulling over this strange little mishap. If this were some poor attempt at enemy infiltration, he was going to have a new headache to deal with. They would have to interrogate him and Hiruzen very much hoped the boy's appearance was a henge, that they wouldn't have to subject a child to the Torture and Interrogation Force. Ibiki wouldn't be swayed to go easy on him just because of his age.

Speak of the devil and he shall appear. From the window, his eyes caught a blond head of hair below, washed out into a muted grey in the darkness. Kakashi stood to the boy's side and soon they disappeared behind the wall of the building. It was good to see that the boy wasn't bound or tied, though he had to question Kakashi's leniency.

The Third Hokage blew out a ring of smoke and grumbled to himself as he lowered into his chair. He retrieved his hat from where it had been discarded atop the desk and put it on. The moments of freedom he'd had in his thirty years of service always seemed so sparse. He looked forward to the day when someone else would take up the chair, when all of this would be their problem, and he could retire for good.

There was a knock at the door, cutting through his tranquil quiet, but before he could answer the door was flung open and on the other side stood a grinning blond, strutting in like he owned the place.

Hiruzen was getting to be too old for this.

Boruto Uzumaki looked left then right, his eyes following the pictures of previous Hokage framed on the wall, then reading the kanji on the desk. His hands were in his pockets, mirroring Kakashi who was looking very unimpressed behind him. Then, finally, he noticed Hiruzen. His eyes were large and wondering, something akin to confusion settling on his face, and then he grinned.

When Boruto ran close, Kakashi's arm shot out to hold the boy at a distance. Boruto pouted but didn't fight the hand on his shoulder, and then his grin was back, and he looked so much like Naruto in that moment that it was damn-near unsettling. "Hey, Grandpa Third."

That, even more so.

Hiruzen's eyes narrowed and he propped his elbows atop his desk, his fingers interlocking as he considered the child that stood before him. After surviving three world wars and heading Konoha for somewhere over three decades (at some point, the years started to blend together, and he could only hope that this wouldn't still be going on at the end of his days), it took a lot to surprise him, and even more to get him to show that surprise on his face. This wasn't enough—not for the latter—but the same could not be said for young Kakashi.

"I'll assume you're Boruto Uzumaki," he breathed, and his eyes flickered down to his pipe but he resisted the urge to grab it. "You've been causing quite a stir these past few days."

"I got that impression," Boruto stated, and there was something smug to his voice that set him apart from young Naruto. Not that Naruto wasn't overconfident in his own right, but Naruto's confidence compensated for his own insecurities. Boruto's felt genuine. "Sorry about that. Really. Didn't mean to have your guys all throwing a fit over me."

"I've been hearing things," Hiruzen stated, analyzing, catching it when Boruto's grin wavered. "A little bird told me that your left hand absorbs chakra."

There it was. The grin was gone and Boruto wrenched his shoulder free of Kakashi's hand. He closed the distance between them with slow, even strides this time, rather than rushing over again and setting everyone on edge. He held up his hand, his palm facing outwards, and Hiruzen studied the black mark that he found there.

"It's this," he said. "A curse. I think. Or some sort of seal. There are more markings like this when I use my chakra. They spread."

Hiruzen looked past the boy to Kakashi, who nodded.

"I've seen it," Kakashi confirmed.

"Look: I'll answer all your questions." Boruto pulled his hand back, shoving it into his pocket and scuffing his shoe against the floorboards. "I'll tell you. But only you."

The implication was far from subtle and Hiruzen was amused, if nothing else. He cast his gaze to the jōnin on standby and nodded. Kakashi didn't hesitate to bow and step out of the room, leaving the Hokage and the boy alone in the office. Kakashi would no doubt be waiting there on the other side of the door. That was fine. He trusted Kakashi not to eavesdrop; that man was nothing if not loyal.

Boruto was less trusting. He cast a wary gaze at the door, eyeing it, but seemed satisfied as minutes of silence passed. His eyes went back to the Hokage portraits, softening a little. "We have the same one at my house," he said simply, "of Grandpa Fourth."

Hiruzen followed his eyes to the portraits. Minato was the last one, the Hokage with the shortest run. Hiruzen had lived long enough to know that the Hokage seat had a high turnover rate and low mortality. Knowing that, it was tiring to know just how long he'd held his position for. Never a day went by where he didn't wish it was Minato there instead of him, but he was an old fool for holding on to a long-dead dream.

"You seem very familiar with the Fourth Hokage," he observed, if only to get the boy talking. Boruto seemed hesitant.

"Well, not like I ever met him. But he's always been there, y'know?"

Boruto's head swivelled around, pouting when he didn't see a chair in sight, and he moved over to lean against the wall. His clothes were caked with mud and stained by grass. There was a tear in his jacket, his hair was a mess, and he looked like he hadn't seen a shower in weeks. Moreover, he looked tired. Kakashi's hunt must have taken its toll on him.

"Enough," Hiruzen stated, closing his eyes. "I would like answers."

Boruto snorted. "Where to start?"

"Your name, for one," Hiruzen pressed. "And why you're currying favour with Konoha's jinchuuriki."

"Jinchuuriki?" Boruto echoed, his brow raised. "That's… I know I've heard that word. Wait, hold on. I got this."

Hiruzen sighed and leaned back into his chair, finally giving in and grabbing hold of his pipe. This was turning into a very long, unhelpful conversation. "The human container for which a tailed beast is sealed."

Boruto's face lit up. He hit his fist against his palm as understanding hit. "Oh! You mean Dad!"

Hiruzen stared at the boy a long while before taking a very long, warranted drag from his pipe.

"Er…" The boy rubbed the back of his neck. "Naruto. You mean Naruto, right? Crap, okay. I really gotta start from the beginning. Okay."

At the very least, Hiruzen was optimistic. Surely they were getting somewhere. That there confirmed that this Boruto child was indeed well aware of what Naruto was. He would consider it progress, if not for that one, horrible word that sat heavy on the Hokage's mind, a prelude into the mess that was about to spill from this boy's lips. He braced himself.

"You won't believe me," Boruto assured. "But I'm going to say it anyway. I'm from the future."

"You're correct," Hiruzen affirmed, not skipping a beat, "I don't. Convince me."

Boruto pouted and crossed his arms, looking around the room as though there were answers hidden in plain sight. When that failed, he pushed off the wall and stood, back straight and eyes forward, and recited like a mantra, "My name is Boruto Uzumaki. I'm a genin from Konoha, from the time of the Seventh Hokage. C'mon, Gramps. I know you see it. Who do I look like to you?"

The Hokage sized the boy up, even though he didn't really need to in order to know what Boruto was getting at. The face was all Naruto, a face of trouble hidden beneath bright blue eyes. "It could be a henge."

"You know it's not." Boruto rolled his eyes and sauntered up to the desk, shaking free of his jacket. The material crumpled to the floor in a heap, revealing a not-so-white short sleeved shirt and bare arms. "If I were using chakra, the mark would light up."

"Show me." It was a formality; Boruto was obviously planning to do just that.

Three hand signs later and a Boruto clone appeared through a puff of smoke. The clone remained unchanged, but the effect on the original was instantaneous; glowing white-blue markings spread across Boruto's left arm, up to and around to the back of his neck, and the brat stuck up his nose.

"See?" He huffed, folding his arms one over the other and standing tall, daring the Hokage to challenge him. "And the moment I stop," the cloned poofed away, the markings faded into a dull black, and then receded, "they go away. This is me, Gramps. Like it or not."

Hiruzen remained mildly unconvinced, partially because of his own inflexibility and partially because he presumed that if this was a ploy by one of the other hidden villages to get to the jinchuuriki, they would have thought of every angle to make the story the most convincing that it could be.

Boruto noticed, if the scowl was anything to go by. "Look," he said, placing a hand atop the desk, "you don't have to believe me. But I said I'd be upfront with you so I will. You're the Hokage, after all… If I can't tell you, then I can't tell anybody. I know I ran, but… man, you know, it's been areally confusing few days and I can't keep doing everything by myself. I'm getting nowhere . I can swallow my pride and admit when I need help."

They locked eyes, Hiruzen waited for the boy to look away, to flinch, to give some tell that he was lying, but when there were none, he nodded and motioned for Boruto to continue.

"Naruto's my old man," he stated bluntly, and even though Hiruzen knew that was what he had been insinuating, it still floored him. "The Seventh Hokage. Don't get me wrong—he's still a good-for-nothing layabout. I always catch him eating ramen in his office."

Seventh. Hiruzen sucked in a breath and turned to the four portraits lined on the wall. "Seventh," he repeated, rasping out a chuckle and shaking his head. "And who are you insinuating is the Fifth?"

"You can probably answer that yourself."

Tsunade.

"And the Sixth?"

Boruto hunched his shoulders conspiratorially and pressed one finger to his lips, pointing to the door with his other hand. "Shhh."

The Hokage stared, a little dumbfounded as he looked past the child to the door where Kakashi was undoubtedly keeping guard on the other side. He could see it; the boy was sharp and skilled, a genius in his own right, but perhaps lacking the ambition needed to carry out the job—ambition that Naruto held in spades, even now at twelve years old.

Hiruzen hated himself for considering that the child may have been telling the truth.

Boruto frowned. The lighthearted amusement was gone from his face. "I messed up," he confessed. His voice was soft, quiet, betraying the self-assured nature he'd displayed up until that point. There was something else there, something edging on self-reproach. "Put simply, I did something stupid on a mission. My team was sent to retrieve a scroll from an excavation site, and I, um…"

Those words were laced with remorse, the kind that could not be faked.

"I'm so stupid ," he hissed, scuffing his shoe against the floor. Then the words just started flowing from his lips like water. "I grabbed an artifact. A scroll. I didn't think it could have countermeasures against theft on it. I don't know what I was thinking. But then I grab it, and the ink just—it justleeches onto me —and suddenly I'm in the past, Dad's shorter than me, and—and the village is entirely different. I mean, even the damn ramen bar! My house isn't even built yet. Dad's living in this little hole-in-the-wall and he's so stupid sometimes but he's there, and that's enough, even when it isn't, and—"

Hiruzen held up a hand and instantly Boruto clammed up.

He heaved a sigh and rubbed his temple in a vague attempt at offsetting the headache bleeding into his brain from the fast-talking time traveller standing there in his office. That was a lot to take in, whether he believed it or not, and it was becoming apparent that Boruto was trying to confide in him. He wondered if they happened to be close in the future, or if he was even still kicking by then. Likely not; he was getting on in years and even if he survived every war that he faced, he wasn't immortal. That meant that this boy was confiding in a stranger. He had nowhere else to turn.

"Let's say I take your word for it," Hiruzen started, fiddling with the pipe in his hand. "Why go to Naruto? Any interaction you make will likely impact the future you claim you're from."

"He came to me ," Boruto defended. It sounded about as childish as expected. "He was just there, suddenly, and he dragged me to get ramen, then Iruka was there… Then when I left he followed me . Like an idiot. After I took his chakra."

"Which brings me to my next point of concern." He let the words hang there and waited expectantly.

"It's the seal," Boruto grumbled, raising his hand to back up his words. "Or… curse. Or whatever. Jinchuuriki contain tailed beasts inside their bodies, right? With seals."

"Correct," Hiruzen nodded.

Boruto rubbed the back of his neck. "Well… it's like that. But instead of a tailed beast, it's this thing that eats chakra. When it's hungry it takes control of me. Then it takes chakra from wherever it can get it. Dad, then Kakashi. It's quiet now, but I don't know when it'll wake up again. That's… why I wanted to come to you."

He raised an eyebrow.

"If anyone would know what to do, it would be the Hokage, right?"

Hiruzen snorted and shook his head. Simple logic. The situation surrounding that logic was anything but, though. He tapped his fingers against the side of his pipe as he thought. If, by chance, Boruto was being honest with him, it wouldn't change the fact that he was a threat. But an unwilling chakra drain was very different from a willing one. If it was something he couldn't help, they could work with it.

"Chakra is everywhere," he muttered after a time, meeting the boy's eyes. "Most living things carry it, to some degree. Humans are far from the only source. Nature chakra is plentiful, for example."

Boruto blinked and then his face lit up and he was practically vibrating in place. "Then—"

"Senjutsu is not so simple to learn. It takes years to master. There are steep prerequisites to learning it, and it comes with a lot of risks," he sighed. "Furthermore, you're young. A genin. You don't have the experience necessary to take that step. You're untrained and untested and in your current state, the likelihood of you succeeding in becoming a senjutsu practitioner is slim. It's not a short-term solution."

Boruto visibly deflated with a level of despair that was damn near palpable. He crumpled inward and lowered himself, picking his dirt-covered jacket up off the floor. "Oh," he said simply, sliding his arms into his sleeves. "Well that… sucks." He chuckled but there was no humour to it. "Guess I won't be allowed to go back to Dad's place, huh?"

Hiruzen closed his eyes and cursed himself, cursed the fact that he was still Hokage in a world where he was coming to believe claims that a cursed time traveller had come from the future with a chakra-eating beast sealed within him, and cursed the fact that a part of him genuinely wanted to help.

If for no other reason than to get this problem out of his office.

"It so happens that I'm well acquainted with a seal master," he continued. "I'll send word to him. At the very least, he may be able to break down the seal already placed on you to give us a starting point towards understanding just what this is."

Boruto lifted his head, the corners of his mouth curling upward. "You think he could change the seal?"

"Who's to say?"

It was times like those that he wished Minato were still around. That boy would have had a field day with a problem like this. The problem was more complex than Boruto seemed to realize. Ordinarily, curses did one thing . Chakra drain was very much something that Hiruzen could see a curse being rigged up to do. If the opponent—or in this case, the thief—had no chakra to work with, it neutralized the threat. But according to Boruto, there was more to it than that; it wasn't just a curse mark draining his chakra, but a living thing, perhaps a manifestation of chakra similar to the tailed beasts, feeding off chakra. That sounded less like a curse and more like the kind of fuinjutsu used to seal the nine-tails. Then, to top it all off, time travel . The whole story was falling apart, yet the absurdity just made it feel more believable. If this were another village's attempt at infiltrating Konoha, it was horribly thought out. He thought better of the other villages' intellect.

Beyond it all, Boruto had Naruto's eyes. Honest eyes. Hiruzen had known those eyes for twelve years now and no matter what form they took, they were always sincere.

"Grandpa Third?"

He snorted. Even Naruto didn't call him that. "Is there more?"

"Until the seal guy comes… I mean, how do we deal…" Boruto's eyes were downcast to the floor. "I can't go back to Dad's place, can I?"

Hiruzen placed his pipe atop the desk and his hands came together, musing the thought. A chakra-eater staying alone with a jinchuuriki was probably the worst possible situation they could put themselves in. "What would you do if the beast got 'hungry,' as you put it?"

"I dunno, I just…" He balled his hands into fists. "I promised to make him dinner."

He stared at the boy, long and hard, and shook his head. He was getting too old for this. "Extreme chakra exhaustion can be lethal," he stated firmly. "Until you can convince me that you have the situation under control, I can't allow you to go around unsupervised."

Boruto's brow furrowed, but he was resigned. He came here knowing that was the likely result. In that way, perhaps that was how he differed from Naruto. Naruto wouldn't have accepted it so easily. "I understand."

Hiruzen was getting way too old for this nonsense.

"Kakashi," he called, his voice loud and carrying over the room. The door opened.

"You called, Lord Third?"

"Send word to Tenzō," he commanded, watching the way Boruto looked at him then, with a slow-forming realization. "I have an assignment for him."

He expected the surprise, but not the way Boruto jumped the desk and wrapped him up in a tight hug.

"You are the best Grandpa ever and I dare anyone to say otherwise."

Hiruzen sighed, rolled his eyes and waved off the confusion Kakashi sent his way. He awkwardly patted the child's back, far too tired to push Boruto off of him.

He was getting soft in his old age.

* * *

 **Adieu~**


	5. Chapter 5

The Seventh Hokage had taken to waiting for progress in the hidden room out of some useless sense of closeness to his son. Out of everywhere, that was the one place he knew that Boruto had been, could see the unpracticed blood seal still dried onto the side of the pedestal, and that was enough. It had to be, because there was nothing else, nothing to latch onto until the archivists got done with the scroll.

Back in Konoha, his cover had already been blown. Shikamaru walked in and it took a whole three seconds to realize that he was talking to a shadow clone. Three seconds and he was being lectured for his irresponsibility, even though he was _pretty sure_ his right hand used clones to do his paperwork, too. He explained the situation as thoroughly as he was able. Shikamaru understood. Any parent would.

Naruto sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, wishing that he could do more than just sit there and wait, but archiving was a foreign skill. As much as he trusted the pair who'd relocated the scroll, he was getting impatient. Boruto was missing, had been for well over a day, almost two. They knew where the kid was now— _when_ —but that did nothing to abate his concern.

Those were dangerous years. Dangerous, and his young self was not up to the task of protecting a stranger, even if he was pretty sure twelve-year-old Naruto would have taken a shine to the kid.

Something tugged at his thoughts, something important, but he quashed it when the pair of archivists entered the room, one holding the scroll carefully within gloved hands.

Naruto rose to his full height, his cloak masking his form, and he smiled. "Found something for me?"

The girl nodded curtly, meeting his eyes levelly as she handed him the scroll. He took it and was surprised that they weren't chastising him for touching it without gloves. He released the clip on the string that held it closed and unrolled it, met with stark-black ink that previously just wasn't there, and he whistled.

"You two sure know your stuff," he commended. "This looks perfect."

"We're still working on it," she corrected, and as his eyes followed to the end of the scroll he found a portion still blank. "But we wanted to show you our progress, at least."

"We know it can't be easy waiting while your son is missing," the man continued, looking all too sympathetic.

"Thanks," he breathed, his lips curled upward as his eyes darted across the characters. They were readable—the pair had translated them when they replaced the ink. That made him think that this was likely a replica they made and not the original. It would explain why they weren't making a fuss over his handling of it. "What have you found?"

"It's an instructional scroll," the woman started, leaning forward to point to the part she was referencing, "but we have reason to suspect that it was imbued with the technique as well. At some point, sealed within it was a massive amount of chakra."

Naruto frowned, already reading the instructions. This technique required a massive store of chakra. He would be able to perform it, with his reserves, but it would be difficult for just one ordinary shinobi. "You think something could have triggered its release?"

"We do," affirmed the man, rubbing the back of his head. "We're just not sure _what_."

"There was another seal placed on it, too." She turned the scroll over and pointed to the six pointed pictogram found there, her face grim. "It seals chakra so that the afflicted can no longer access it. We've recreated it as best as we could, but it appears that the ink ran on the original, so some parts may have been misconstrued."

Naruto hummed, then flipped it back to the instructions and read. According to what they were saying, his son should have had no access to his chakra. But he did. He very _obviously_ did, because Boruto would not have been able to leave that imprint for them to find otherwise.

Eventually his eyes fell to the blank space at the end of the scroll. "And what's missing?"

The archivists looked between one another, their faces grim. "How to manipulated it," the man supplied. "We uncovered how to perform the jutsu, but not how to control it. As it is now, using it could mean that you don't end up where you want to, or don't have a way back. Without that, what we have is essentially useless. It's too dangerous to perform."

"We'll keep working," his partner assured. "And we _will_ help retrieve your son. We promise, Lord Seventh. I swear on my life."

But Naruto wasn't listening. Naruto was smiling, reading the scroll again and again, memorizing it again and _again_ , a small chuckle edging on relief rising up from his throat. "What, is that all?"

He missed the way the pair paled with total understanding.

"He never gave us a date anyway, the brat," he laughed. Sure, he was twelve years old in that time. But there were twelve months worth of days in between all of that and no way of knowing just which was the one where his son landed.

"No," the woman protested, shaking her hands in utter refusal of his implication, "No, no, no, Lord Seventh. You can't. You may not have the control necessary to come back. Or—you may not even land in the same _year—"_

Naruto rolled up the scroll and slipped it into his belt with a grin on his face. His hands came together in a strange, foreign hand sign, and both archivists stilled.

"Time manipulation jutsu, eh?"

"Lord Seventh, please reconsider—"

There was a quick succession of hand signs, a pool of chakra in his gut, and he was gone. It made no sound, no movement. Like a ghost, he simply… wasn't.

Across the Land of Fire, there was a puff of smoke and the shadow clone seated on the Hokage's chair was no longer there to hear Shikamaru's reprimands.

* * *

Looking away from the ghoulish eyes of the man they called Tenzō was unnaturally hard. They were bottomless black pools and the moment he looked into them, they had him right where they wanted him. He stared, stiff and anxious, and they stared right back, right into his very _soul_.

Then Tenzō looked away and all was right with the world.

Tenzō held an old jōnin uniform up to him, measuring with his eyes. Those empty, _haunting_ eyes. He hummed, pressing the fabric to Boruto's shoulders. "It may fit," he mused. "Though it _is_ a bit old. We can find something more suited to your tastes in town, if you'd like."

Boruto was making a face, wearing his uncertainty on his sleeve even as he snatched the uniform from the ANBU's grasp. It did look old, but was in better shape than his own clothes, and smelled a lot less like sweat and pointless misadventure, so it was good enough for him.

"I'll live," he assured as he slipped into the bathroom to bathe. His hair was flat against his head from weather and unneeded dips into the river, and as the bathroom filled up with steam he wondered when the last time he felt that disgusting had been. It seemed that ever since arriving in the past, he was doing a lot of things he normally wouldn't. Case in point, Boruto wasn't the type to get his hands dirty, or to over-exert himself. He never put his all into a mission because he never felt that he needed to.

He overheard Dad say something to that effect once. 'His clothes always look brand new.' Boruto was coming to understand that he should maybe take offense to that, even if it happened to be true.

"These were yours?" Boruto called through the door, where he just _knew_ that creepy bastard was keeping watch. That was fine. If being monitored like a convict was the only way for him to retain his freedom, then that was fine by him.

"When I was younger," Tenzō supplied from the common room.

"You must have been a really young jōnin."

"Well, yes."

Boruto wasn't sure he liked that matter-of-fact attitude, and it wasn't just the smidge of jealousy talking, knowing that the man acting as his warden was already an elite shinobi by his age.

His hair soaked in bath water, he both looked and felt like a drowned rat. Scrubbing out the dirt and mud and whatever else had gotten caked onto him in his escape from the Copy-nin was a welcomed relief, though, and he allowed himself to indulge in the warmth of the room, keeping the crisp chill of autumn at bay.

Through the frosted glass of the bathroom door he could make out the vague impression of Tenzō on the other side. He wasn't sure if he was ever formally introduced to the Wood Release user—if he was, he had to have been pretty young—but he knew _of_ Tenzō, more for the name he would later go by, Yamato. Dad mentioned him in passing now and then. Apparently Yamato was off on a long-term mission and had been for quite some time. He could use Wood Release, something not seen since the First Hokage, and one of the skills it provided him with was chakra suppression.

It made sense that Tenzō was chosen to guard him.

Boruto sank down into the water, hesitant to get out. It'd been a solid few hours since he parted with Naruto in the streets and he'd be shocked if he went back to the apartment and _didn't_ find the kid already dead of starvation. He was about at that point himself; Grandpa Third offered him food but if he ate when his father refrained he'd feel all sorts of guilt, so he declined.

After some time, Boruto sucked in a breath and rose out of the bath. Water dripped from his hair into his eyes as he felt around for a towel to pat himself down, then reached over to the uniform neatly folded on the counter beside the sink.

He grimaced as he slipped the faded black uniform on. "Could we go tomorrow?" he tried, pulling a face as he stared at himself in the mirror. The uniform looked horrible on him. It was too long in some places, too short in others. And it was tight. Well, uniforms usually were. Boruto was used to baggy clothing, though— _breathing room_. This felt too restricting. "For clothes."

"If you'd like," Tenzō chimed from the door.

"Great," he grinned and pulled the flak jacket straight. The door swung open and a billow of steam fogged out around him. He went to shove his hands into his pockets and pulled a face when he realized that the only pockets he had were the ones in his pants. It was different. Boruto didn't like different. He tried very hard not to dwell on it, or to take notice of the fact that he was adopting Kakashi's usual stance. "Ready?"

"If you are."

" _Always_."

Boruto effortlessly memorized the way to his father's apartment. It was easy to retrace their steps from the other night as the Hokage office was located in the administrative section of the academy, which he'd already visited. Tenzō was content to let him lead the way; the Hokage's instructions were not to restrict his freedom, but to prevent any unfortunate incidents that may be incited by what Grandpa Third called 'vampirism.'

Never was there a more fitting word.

Boruto had his own instructions, too: he was to inform Tenzō the moment that he felt anything change with the duly-named chakra beast, especially if hunger were involved. His cooperation would help stop any incidents before they started, or that was the hope.

He looked over at Tenzō, wondering just how much of the truth the Hokage shared. He knew better than to ask a freakin' _ANBU_ about a mission.

"Sorry you got dragged into all of this," he said, rubbing the back of his neck when the silence got a little _too_ stifling. "Must be a pain, having to babysit some kid when you could be off doing something important."

Tenzō raised an eyebrow, the faintest traces of a smile on his lips as he followed half a pace behind his charge. "Every mission is important," he answered simply. "If it wasn't, I wouldn't have been assigned it."

"Not a bad way of looking at it, I guess."

Tenzō nodded to the building a short ways down the road and Boruto followed the gesture to his father's apartment, letting out a sigh. The lights were still on, and through the window he could make out Naruto's silhouette.

"Look at him," he laughed, shaking his head, "all sad and dejected. What a loser. Hey, you met him before? Naruto?"

"Not formally." Tenzō was staring through the window, too, a hard look on his face. There was something going on behind those ghostly eyes that went unsaid. "I know of him. You would be hard-pressed to find anyone in Konoha who doesn't."

"I've gotten that impression," Boruto sighed. "Alright. Let's go. Come on, before his hunger eats a hole through his seal."

"That's highly unlikely. Bordering on impossible."

Boruto rolled his eyes. His sense of humour was ahead of his time. Or, well, _this_ time. One day he would get the recognition that he so deserved.

Admittedly, even he thought that particular joke was a bit stale.

"This is where we part," Tenzō continued. His arm lifted, and he pointed to the roof of the apartment. "I'll be keeping guard out here for the duration of the night. If anything happens, just walk outside and I'll come over immediately. Understood?"

"Crystal clear." He half expected Tenzō to join them inside, but instead it was the same as what Kakashi had done that first night. All those ANBU types thought the same. "Stay warm, 'kay? It's gettin' cold."

Tenzō smiled. Tenzō should never smile. Even at its sincerest, it came off as a bad omen.

"G'night, creepy old man!"

Tenzō gave a look caught between horrified and despairing. "That's not my name. You know that's not my name. Why can't you just use my _name_?"

Boruto grinned and waved back at the ANBU as he climbed the stairs to his father's flat. The grin faltered when he came to the door and he swallowed. It felt like there was a knot in his throat and he hesitated, his hand looming just above the door, halfway to a knock, never quite following through.

There was worry there, buried deep beneath the layers of certainty he fed himself, that there would be a repeat of that first night.

He was Boruto Uzumaki. Like hell that would stop him.

With a swift kick, the door jutted open and he marched inside with his hands on his hips, back straight and chin up. It didn't last and he crumpled over with laughter when Naruto yelped and fell off the bed.

The boys stared at one another. Naruto rubbed his side. Boruto caught his breath.

"A little warning never hurt, y'know!" Naruto shouted. The reprimand held no bite to it. It might have had something to do with how hard he was trying to repress a smile.

"Spontaneity is the lifeblood of the soul."

"What horoscope did you get that off of?"

"Fortune cookie, actually," he said matter-of-factly.

The tension that built up while he was ruminating in the doorway abated and he closed the distance between them, offered a hand and helped Naruto to his feet. Before he could ask, Naruto's stomach answered for him, a loud, strangled noise filling the air.

Boruto crossed his arms much like a scolding parent, even though he expected as much. "You didn't eat."

Naruto mimicked his stance, his eyes narrowed shut in that weird, fox-like way of his. "You said not to eat ramen," he defended, as though he'd already recited it in his head, "and that's all I got."

Boruto rolled his eyes and sighed. He pivoted around and opened the fridge. For a while he just stared into the empty box of spoiled milk and nothing else. Dad wasn't lying. When was the last time the idiot actually filled his fridge?

He slammed the fridge door shut and turned to pin his father beneath a heavy glare.

Naruto stuck up his nose and dropped back onto his bed with a huff. "There's nothing left from my allowance, y'know!"

"That's cause you wasted it on ramen." He held his tongue and managed to keep from adding a spiteful 'old man' label at the end of that. There was nothing to be done about it, and he was in no position to give lectures. He wasted his last allowance on a new video game. Boruto was by no means the responsible one. So, instead of bickering, he headed back to the open door.

Naruto fisted the bedsheets. "You're going?"

"To get _food_ ," Boruto droled. "The hell am I supposed to cook without ingredients? I'll be right back."

He waved over his shoulder and the door clicked shut behind him. He could feel a smile tug at the corners of his lips and leaned back against the door, soaking up the moment.

 _"Hungry?"_

He tensed, closed his eyes, and retreated inward. _Not now_ was a thought he repeated like a mantra, but it was different. The pull wasn't there, the urge that overcame him both times before. Knowing that eased him. He still needed to know for sure.

Boruto was in that dark, unending void again, pinprick eyes floating ominously through the piercing black. He stood tall before it, shifting his weight as he sized it up.

"You're hungry?" he asked it, and waited. Nothing. "You'd better not be. I won't let you screw this up for me, y'hear?"

 _"You."_

Oh. Huh.

"...Yeah. Damn straight I'm hungry. But I don't go around _attacking people_ when I am. You could learn a thing or two, ya shitty bastard."

There was nothing again, just a lot of staring and a dead-end conversation, and he deemed all was well for the moment.

When he returned to his senses, Tenzō was staring at him with with vacant-eyed concern. He jumped, a small noise escaping him that he would refuse to acknowledge if anyone ever brought it up _ever_ , and edged away.

"Has something happened?" Tenzō prompted, ignoring Boruto's clear unease.

" _No_ , Sage, stop looking at me like that—" He went to duck out from under the ANBU's gaze but stopped himself, considered the man, and snapped his fingers. "Hey, how much cash you got on ya?"

Tenzō looked deeply, wholly concerned.

* * *

Boruto was at the point of hunger where he didn't _care_ that the roast was half raw, he was ready to tear the meat off the bones anyway. It didn't help that his father was practically drooling over his shoulder, or that he was running around the little flat like a headless chicken as he tried to keep the pot on the stove from bubbling over, the roast in the oven from _burning_ , and the tea in the kettle from over steeping.

In his desire to show off, Boruto may have gone the _tiniest_ bit overboard, especially considering that he'd never made dinner without his mother's aid. He kept it simple. A harvest soup—because he could _never_ mess up something as easy as soup—and a roast because he'd marinated them enough to have some vague clue as to what he was doing. There was a learning curve to overcome with how dated everything was (an unfortunate effect of travelling back in time) but he was managing. Barely, but he was.

He should have made them sandwiches. Or dumplings.

The food came close to done, and the smell brought his thoughts back to the family left waiting for him in the future. He missed Mom's cooking. With her around, he never went hungry. Himawari had taken to setting the table at dinner. She took some sense of pride in it, in helping out Mom. It was the cutest thing to watch.

He set two plates down at the four-seat table and took his place across from his father, stealing nervous glances now and then as he poured their tea. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if this was a typical meal for Konoha families back in the day. Times had changed, and now he was worried his father wasn't going to like it, and that he'd went through all of that trouble for nothing. Maybe it was stupid, but Boruto wore his fare share of insecurities beneath all that confidence, especially where Dad was concerned.

He glanced up to see that Naruto hadn't touched the utensils.

"Here I thought you were starving to death," Boruto murmured between bites as he tried to mask his own uncertainty. "It's not _that_ bad, y'know."

"Oh." Naruto shook himself and pulled his plate closer, vibrating in his seat. "I just…"

The words hung there as Naruto devoured his portion and got up for seconds. He took his time with his second helping, actually bothering to _taste_ the food, which was nice. There was a laugh, then, a soft little chuckle beneath the sound of scraping plates.

Boruto tipped his bowl to pour the last of the soup broth into his mouth and set it back down with a solid clink. He eyed his father. "You're being creepy over there by yourself."

Naruto's shoulders hunched as his laughter devolved into a long string of muffled giggling. "Sorry," he breathed, which must have been hard with the fit he was having.

Mildly concerned, Boruto escaped to start on dishes. Back home he'd whine and moan about cleaning up after dinner, if only because he liked to make life difficult for those around him, but here it kept him busy. A welcomed distraction.

The steady flow of water from the tap did little to break up the sounds behind him. Boruto couldn't remember the last time he saw his old man so… giddy. What was he acting so stupid over, it was just—

It occured to Boruto that his father wouldn't have had a family dinner before. He peeked back at Naruto, who was making his way through a second bowl of soup.

 _...Stupid old man._

The quiet was killing him, though.

"They're bringing a seal master in to take a look at my chakra beast problem," he said simply, trying to cram some dialogue in, now that he was regretting the awkward silence he let hang when he was eating. "Grandpa Third's the best Hokage."

"Only 'til _I_ become Hokage," Naruto supplied matter-of-factly.

Boruto's hands stilled and he suppressed the unsavoury remarks settled at the back of his throat.

"I'll be the greatest Hokage Konoha's ever seen." There was so much certainty behind his words that it was honestly ridiculous.

Boruto twisted around to meet his father's stare and thought to counter it. 'Why do you want to be Hokage so bad?' He thought to ask but never followed through, pressing his lips into a thin line.

Naruto finished and brought his dishes over to the sink, nudging Boruto out of the way. Boruto allowed it and went to sit over on the bed, staring through the window at the dark. He wondered absently if Tenzō got bored out there. Or cold. Maybe they should bring him up a blanket. Or tea.

Then again, the tea wasn't all that great.

"I've been thinking," Naruto started.

Boruto looked over to see Naruto rubbing the back of his neck and glared dully. "That's never good."

When Naruto shot him a look that closely resembled a grumpy old man, he decided it was worth it.

" _I've been thinking_ ," he repeated firmly, "that I—"

There was a pause. He tried again.

"I mean…"

"What?"

Naruto kicked the ground and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The tap shut off, all of their dishes now drying in the rack, and the ensuing stillness made the moment feel heavier than it probably needed to.

"Forget it," Naruto dismissed. He dropped onto one of the wooden chairs and propped one foot onto his opposing knee, tapping his finger restlessly against his shin. "Hey, hey—you gonna be joining a squad now that you're stayin' here?"

"Dunno," Boruto blinked. "Hadn't thought of it."

"What about that mission you were on?"

"Right. That." He'd completely forgotten that he told his father about that. "Let's say I've been reassigned."

Naruto looked skeptical but let it pass, scooting closer to the edge of the seat. "Kakashi-sensei is my jōnin instructor, y'know. But he's always showing up late."

Naruto's words turned to rambling, but Boruto wasn't bothered. He listened. Listened to complaints about Sasuke, stories about how Sasuke was the worst student in the academy—something that Boruto _very much doubted_ —and words of praise for Sakura. It was the first time he actually sat to listen to his father's stories. It was hard to look away, Naruto's arms flailing expressively as an extension of his words.

Boruto sat with his chin his hand, his elbow on the windowsill, and his eyes on his father. For the first time in days, he pushed his fears and stress aside and just listened.

That was enough.

* * *

Boruto may have hated the jōnin uniform on principle, but it _did_ have its uses.

He stared at his reflection in the mirror. His henge was perfect—because of _course_ it was, he got the highest score in the class when they were learning the transformation jutsu—and as he turned his face to examine it at all angles, he grinned. There was no recognizing him, between his straight black hair and brown eyes. The long sleeves of the uniform helped cover up most, but not all, of the glowing markings down his arm—nothing a pair of gloves couldn't fix.

He spun on his heel to face Tenzō, smug with every reason to be so. "How do I look?"

"Inconspicuous enough, I suppose," Tenzō nodded, handing over a pair of gloves. They were a little large but tolerable.

"Good enough for me! Let's go, Tenzō, my man!"

Tenzō sighed.

The first thing on their list was to get Boruto a few outfits. A genin wearing a jōnin uniform was hardly practical, especially in the event of an incident in the village. Boruto couldn't _remember_ any attacks on the village at this particular time—not until the chunin exams—but he also had a tendency to sleep through history back at the academy. They didn't _tell_ him that he had to maintain a henge, but it was heavily implied and he could see their reasoning. He recalled the looks that he got when he first arrived, wandering around on his own. People mistook him for Naruto. A part of him resented that. Another part knew that if they didn't mistake him, they would see the similarities and question it. That was somehow worse.

Avoiding it all with a henge felt like the most practical solution.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and they started out into town. "I can probably maintain it for a good three hours."

"We'll try to finish up before you reach your limit," Tenzō assured.

The first stop was a clothing stall. With his loyal guard monitoring from a distance, Boruto sifted through the racks for something that fit in well with his wardrobe back home. To his dismay, there wasn't much; everything was old fashioned and a bit tacky. This was the past, he reminded himself, and 'old fashioned' was about the best he was going to get. He held up a long-sleeved black shirt, pressing it flush with his chest, and frowned. It didn't look right.

He spun around, presenting it to his guard with a raised eyebrow. "Well?"

Tenzō smiled, leaning back against the wall. He blended in a lot better in the standard jōnin uniform than in his ANBU gear, sure. But something still looked off about him. Boruto suspected something always would. "It's good."

He pouted. "But not _great_."

"I think it suits you," Tenzō added placatingly.

Boruto sighed and tossed it at the ANBU, who caught it easily enough, and went back to searching. Tenzō would be agreeable about whatever he was showed, so it wasn't like he was actually any _help_. But this wasn't an ANBU's field of expertise by any means and Boruto couldn't fault him for that.

It would have been nice to have someone with a real opinion, though.

Clothes shopping took longer than he cared to admit. Two hours later, they were wandering the streets, Tenzō carrying two bags worth of slightly tolerable attire. He found out that Grandpa Third had allocated funds to Tenzō just for things like that, and he sure as hell wasn't going to let that go to waste.

His next goal was food, because he doubted the leftovers in the fridge were going to last them any appreciable length of time. The market was bustling at that time of day, much unlike their visit the night before, and he was suddenly very glad for the henge. _Very_ glad. The thought of that many pairs of eyes looking at him the way they did Dad was enough to sour his mood.

He never did get a straight answer about the reason behind those stares.

Boruto dragged himself down the street with his hands in his pockets, eyeing the food stalls. He knew how to tell good ingredients from bad—the basics, anyway—but that didn't help much when he didn't know what to make for dinner. He stopped at a fish stall and leaned close to a large bass they had up for sale, then raised an eyebrow at Tenzō. "You know how to fillet a fish?"

"I've had some experience," Tenzō said simply, shifting the bags between hands. "Why?"

Boruto shrugged. "I don't think Naruto would care if you joined. Doesn't it get cold out there? And boring?"

The ANBU smiled. It was sincere—or, Boruto thought it was _supposed_ to be, but it came off a little too unsettling. "You don't have to worry about me. I'm well adept at missions like these. The cold doesn't bother me one bit."

He rolled his eyes. "That doesn't mean you can't share a meal with us. Hey, Old Lady. I'll take this one, please."

The middle-aged woman running the stall turned to him and took the offered ryo, bagging the fish. Her eyes scanned Boruto with mild confusion and gave pause, a tiny smile on her face. "Oh, my. How rare, to see such a little jōnin." He resented the 'little' part. "Your parents must be so proud."

He laughed, the sound forced and awkward, because laughing was about the only thing he could do. He took the bag and rubbed the back of his neck.

"Y-yeah. Definitely. Prodigy son and all that. Take care, Old Lady."

"You'd do well to mind your manners, little jōnin."

"Sorry!"

Boruto turned on his heel and headed away from that conversation as fast as he could. Tenzō looked mildly amused, and Boruto resented him for it.

Grocery shopping took up the remainder of his last hour. Tenzō was all too happy to remind him of his limit and urge him to return home, and he had no qualms about doing so. In the end, they made good headway on food for the week. He picked up ingredients for udon for another night, because he was pretty sure he knew most of the recipe and was confident he could get by with a little guesswork. He'd grabbed some fruits and vegetables to eat throughout the day—stuff that would at _least_ be better than Dad's junk food and instant ramen. And he _did_ get stuff for sandwiches and dumplings. He was no slave, and if Naruto wanted a hot meal every night then he could damn well make it himself.

This was probably going to be the healthiest he'd ever eaten by his own will. Back home, he was just as bad as his father—though if anyone said it aloud he would vehemently deny it.

The path back to the apartment took him down a lot of side streets. He hummed an absent tune as they walked, veering off the main path. He looked around at the small, humble buildings of the Konoha of decades before his time with a soft, amused smile. Its aesthetics definitely meshed well with the image of the useless old man he had of future Naruto. Of course someone like Dad would grow up in a place like this.

" _Damn_ it!"

The words were growled out and other, less savory terms were subsequently bitten back. Boruto followed the familiar sound to the trees that bled into his periphery. There was a fork in the road ahead, one of the paths following the sound into the trees, and he considered it momentarily.

That was definitely Naruto's voice cursing the world. He wasn't surprised.

Tenzō came to a halt beside him, following his eyes.

"Hey," he called, turning to face the noise. He could hear movement far into the distance, the sound of metal scraping together. They were still a long ways from the apartment so he knew he shouldn't get sidetracked, but curiosity was one of his greatest weaknesses. "What's over there?"

"The Third Training Ground," Tenzō supplied easily enough. "I believe it's being used by a team of genin at the moment."

"Naruto's team," Boruto continued. Truth be told, he never saw his father train, or even fight, for that matter. He'd seen Sage Mode in the past, but not his father going all out using it against an opponent. It was pretty clear that even if he sat in on their training, that wouldn't change. Still…

He took a step towards the training ground when a hand caught his shoulder, unyielding as he tried to jerk free.

"You know that you shouldn't," Tenzō warned. "That henge is a constant leech off your chakra. We should head back before we risk it breaking because of your low reserves."

"Lay off," Boruto grumbled, but his words had no bite. "It's still solid. Not like I'm jumping head-first into a fight."

That time when he tugged, Tenzō let go. He stumbled forward and caught himself, sticking up his nose as he walked.

Boruto followed the path into the brush and slowed to a halt at the end where the sunshade of trees opened up to a large grassland. Three stumps stood side-by-side in the centre before a large stone memorial, one that he recognized from the version of Konoha that he was familiar with. It helped him orientate himself as one of the few landmarks that stood unchanged in time. This training ground was vast—most were—and he'd only been able to hear Naruto's voice because Naruto was so close to the path at the time. When he arrived, Naruto had rushed back into the clearing and leapt into the air with half a dozen shadow clones right there alongside him.

A blow to his pride, that. His father could already produce more than him at his age.

The clones descended upon their instructor with kunai in hand, but the moment they hit the target, Kakashi vanished in a puff of smoke. A log clattered to the ground and rolled across the grass, the clones looking this way and that.

"Crap, where'd he go?"

"He's gotta be hiding around here somewhere…"

"Naruto!" That voice was distinctly feminine. A Very young, very _small_ Aunt Sakura marched out of the wilderness with fury in her eyes. "What happened to waiting for my signal?!"

The clones retreated to the safety of non-existence, leaving their original to rub his neck in nervous laughter. "I got excited, y'know?"

"You're impossible!"

"Aw, don't be mad! I'll get it right this time!"

"It doesn't matter if you get it right _now_ because Kakashi-sensei _knows_ what our plan is," she hissed, running a hand through her long hair in visible show of her stress. "Now we're going to have to start all over again. No thanks to you."

"But Sakura, I—"

Boruto's head snapped around to face the dark-eyed figure looming over him. Through the trees, he could make out a face he knew from a photograph Dad kept in the Hokage office, the face of a very young Uncle Sasuke. He knew _of_ Sasuke, knew plenty about him from the stories he'd mostly tuned out of his father's history, but he had never met the man face-to-face. Now that figure was there, looking at him, _watching him_. Sasuke must have sensed his presence while he was walking; if he had then there was no doubt Kakashi noticed, too.

He glanced at Tenzō and regretted it as the black, soulless pits of Tenzō's eyes stared right back. There was an I-told-you-so hidden in there somewhere.

Sasuke stepped forward, kunai in hand as his attention switched between Boruto and Tenzō, keeping both somewhere within his periphery at all times. "You're interrupting our training."

Boruto grinned, hands on his hips with an upright posture that he hoped conveyed the fact that he wasn't going to be intimidated by some little punk. Then again, this little punk was said to be Dad's greatest rival. Maybe he _should_ be intimidated.

A glance to Naruto had him dismissing that thought, the poor kid getting pumeled into the ground by his teammate. Aunt Sakura could be scary when she was angry.

"Sorry," he said, but didn't sound very apologetic. "Didn't mean to mess up your timing."

Sasuke narrowed his eyes.

What a suspicious little punk.

"Alright, I've seen enough."

The two in the clearing stopped their tiff and even Sasuke turned to the voice. Kakashi was seated on a low tree branch, a book held lazily in one hand, opened to a page halfway through. He hopped off the branch and landed with a soft thud, blades of grass crushed beneath his shoes. He looked so incredibly unimpressed, and that was a look that Boruto knew all too well from the old man of _his_ time.

Then Kakashi's attention was on him, on the partially visible glowing markings of his arm, and he anxiously pulled down his sleeve; no doubt Kakashi knew who he was, henge be damned. Not that he was really trying to hide it. Not from Kakashi.

Then it was gone, back to his students, and he felt a small relief. There was something about having the Sixth Hokage look at him and then dismiss him that pissed him off, though.

Kakashi sighed. "Naruto, the point of a plan is to _follow through_. If you're just going to disregard it at the last second, why bother with it at all?"

Naruto looked somewhat shamed. It was a nice look on him.

"And Sasuke," he chastised, "going off on your own in the middle of a mission is just as reckless as Naruto's actions. Teamwork is the very core of a shinobi squad. Without it, you may as well be dead. That goes for _all_ of you."

The team took the reprimands to heart, wearing their internal frustrations on their sleeves. This training method felt very different from the one Konohamaru was using with Boruto's team. He heard that Kakashi used to be ruthless as a jōnin instructor, but had never been on the receiving end of one of the old man's lectures to know for himself.

"Take a break," Kakashi commanded with a wave of his hand. "Then we're trying this again. No lunch until we get it right."

There was a collective groan from the pair in the clearing as they sunk into the grass. Sasuke gave one last look before joining his teammates.

"Naruto," the instructor called, pointing in Boruto's direction with the corner of his book. "I believe you have a visitor. Don't take too long."

Naruto followed the gesture, but when he finally noticed Boruto his face twisted, head tilted, as he tried to call to mind a name that matched the face. Of _course_ Dad wouldn't be able to see through the henge. It was so like him. He scrunched up his brow and thought.

Boruto lifted his arm and waved. He hadn't _intended_ to interrupt their training, but he wasn't about to pass up the chance to speak with someone whose eyes _reflected light_. Something about Tenzō's made him feel a bit hopeless. "Hey!"

His sleeve slid down as he waved and revealed the branded glow coiling across his skin.

Naruto snapped his fingers and ran over with a grin, skidding to a halt before he knocked them both over. "What're _you_ doing here?" Then he noticed Tenzō. "Who's he?"

"Tenzō's just Tenzō," he said matter-of-factly, as though it answered any questions his father could possibly have. Right, they wouldn't have met. Tenzō confirmed that last night. "We were just running some errands. Get back to work before the old man lectures you again."

"Yeah, yeah…" Naruto pouted. He moved to leave but his eyes caught on the bag of food in Tenzō's hand and his eyes lit up. "Hey, hey—"

"No," Boruto chastised. "I heard what Kakashi said. No lunch til you do your… whatever," he tried. He hadn't seen enough of their training to know what, exactly, they were focusing on.

Naruto shot him a sour, betrayed look, kicked the dirt, and returned to his team with a dejected grumble.

The squad took another several minutes to collect themselves, huddling together with hushed voices, shooting their instructor the occasional wary glance. For all that Sasuke looked like he didn't want to be involved in his teammates' stupid plans, he was listening pretty intently. They looked serious, _very_ serious. Naruto's clothes were covered in dirt and grass stains and there was a tear in his sleeve. He'd been at this all morning, if Boruto had to guess, and for all that he was apparently no good at following direction, he was giving it his all.

Boruto exchanged looks with Tenzō, pleading with him.

"Just for a bit?"

Tenzō held his stare for a good half minute before sighing. "You really want to watch your brother train that badly?"

Brother?

Boruto hunkered down to sit cross-legged at the base of one of the trees lining the clearing. He said nothing when Tenzō lowered down next to him, turning the word around in his head, mulling over it perhaps a little longer than necessary. Ahead, the team was back at it. They vanished from sight, but he knew they were there, hiding within the trees as Kakashi loitered out in the open with all the confidence of a well-practiced jōnin. There was that book in one hand, the other in his pocket, as he lazily shifted his weight and awaited the attack.

Brother, huh? That must have been what the Hokage told Tenzō. It was more believable than 'time travelling son from the future' and raised a hell of a lot less questions, some of which could be answered by the off-the-cusp cover story he shared about being brought up in Suna. The reasons behind being shipped off to another village would be a little harder to think up, but he doubted Tenzō, at least, would start asking questions.

Brother. Not his father, but his brother.

The groceries were set between them and Boruto rifled through one of the bags, his attention tearing away from the full-frontal assault Team 7 was making against their instructor. Near twenty shadow clones were pushing Kakashi back—not that the man looked the least bit phased until one hooked itself around his waist and brought him a moment of pause. Two others rushed in to hang off his arms, Icha Icha falling into the grass, and a fourth stood before him, palm-to-fist with a confident smirk.

The clone's form bled away to reveal pink hair and grinning eyes and she lurched forward—

All at once, Kakashi's body disappeared, another piece of wood and mix of leaves falling to the ground in another substitution, and a kunai shot out of the trees and pinned one of the Naruto clone's sleeves to one of the three posts centerfield. The clone stared wide-eyed at the kunai's origin through the brush to a narrow-eyed Sasuke, then dulled.

"Much better," it said, and the henge bled away to reveal the true form of Kakashi. "Better, but not good enough. Sakura, your transformation was top-notch, but it means little when you don't act the part. And Naruto—"

Kakashi's eye lifted to see the boy in question already in the air, fist pulled back and waiting. Naruto launched it forward but Kakashi was already twisting out of the way.

A shuriken cut through the air from Sasuke's place in the trees but Kakashi was long gone before it made its target. It sailed past and sunk its blade into a tree with a crack of bark.

Boruto slowly turned his head to face the shuriken that just narrowly avoided stabbing him in the eye. It took him a moment to register. He'd just pulled a pear out of the bag and it rolled out of his hand and onto the ground as he blinked back at the three students staring at him from the clearing.

He gulped down the small bit of terror that the near-hit bubbled to the surface and waved, his mouth drawn into a tight smile. It was his own fault for being so relaxed while observing a genin training session, he knew. He also knew that Tenzō wouldn't have sat back and watched him lose an eye if there was actually a threat of that shuriken making contact. "Don't mind me!"

They _were_ minding. Sakura's confusion wasn't exactly hidden behind her wide-eyed stare and gaping mouth, and Sasuke looked even more suspicious now than before, but Dad was—

Naruto was pale.

Boruto stopped waving, his hand coming down, and his eyes found that his sleeve had shifted place again, revealing the slight tan of his skin. Unmarked. He shot up and patted himself down. The build of his body was a familiar one and the jōnin uniform was too big in some areas and too small in others and he cursed himself.

The henge was gone. Like a damn _amateur_ , he let his surprise shake his focus and he broke concentration long enough to lose the image he had of the henge. Now in place of black hair was a striking blond, brown eyes a bright blue, and he was anything _but_ inconspicuous.

Naruto's teammates turned to him, then to Naruto and back again.

Dad looked so small under those accusatory glances.

"Hey," Sakura started, their training now forgotten as she scrunched up her brow and scrutinized Boruto. "Who _is_ that guy, Naruto? He looks _just like_ you."

"Uh—"

Boruto took offence to that, reaching down to pick up the pear and polish away the dirt against his flak jacket. He knew it was true, but he still resented it.

"His brother."

The squad of genin spun around to see Kakashi appearing through a gentle cyclone of wind and leaves. He bent forward to pick his book off the ground, brushed away the dirt, and flipped through the pages to find his place. Boruto made a mental note to get him a bookmark as an apology for their little road trip the other day. It seemed like a useful gift.

"His name is Boruto Uzumaki, and he's visiting from Suna," Kakashi continued, feeding their curiosity because he knew there was no way the kids would get anything done otherwise.

Naruto's eyes widened on his instructor. Apparently he'd been unaware of their cover story, too.

Boruto took a deep breath and his hand shot back up in a second wave, grabbing his father's attention before Naruto could question their new label. "Hey, little brother! Get your ass back in gear and give me something to brag about!"

'Little,' because Boruto stood just a few centimetres taller than his father and for him, that was enough.

Naruto stilled, swallowed, and nodded his head as he pushed whatever he wanted to say behind a smile. "I'll do better than that, y'know!"

Sasuke remained unconvinced, but Aunt Sakura looked like she believed it.

Kakashi clapped his hands and drew back their attention and the lesson resumed with a few words of praise for their progress followed by a detailed breakdown of where exactly they went wrong and then they tried again. There were bells at his hip, familiar bells that Boruto recognized from his own graduation exam, though looking a lot less dented and weathered than the ones he came _so close_ to snatching by his own power, and he concluded that this was a continuation of the standard bell test, just to give the students a goal as they practiced their teamwork.

Boruto pulled a second pear out of the bag and held it up to Tenzō, who accepted it with a sigh.

"This is why I suggested we return, you know."

"Oh, I know." He shrugged it off, amused as the team's plan fell apart again and ended with Naruto and Sakura bickering for, what, the third time? "I'll have the henge up when we head back. Just—gimme a few? I want to watch."

Tenzō looked at him then, but this time his eyes didn't look so empty. There was a soft, patient understanding, the faint upward turn of his lips.

"I'll be counting the minutes," he said simply.

Boruto snorted. "I figured as much."

* * *

 **Adieu~**


End file.
